AN APPEAL 



FROM THE 



JUDGMENTS OF GREAT BRITAIN 



RESPECTING THE 



PART FIRST, 



CONTAINING 

AN HISTORICAL OUTLINE 

OF THEIR 

MERITS AND WRONGS AS COLONIES; 

AND 
STPJCTURES UPON THE CALUMNIES OF THE BRITISH WRITERS. 

BY ROBERT WALSH, Jr. 



Quod quisque fecit, patitur : autotem scelui 
Repetit, suoque premitor exemplo noceni. 

SENEC, 



PHILADELPHIA : 

PUBCISHED BY MITCHELL, AMES, ANP WHITE. 

William Brown, Printer. 

1819. 






Eastern District of Pennsylvania, to -mt 
BE IT RE.VIEMBERFn ti 

the forty.fourth year of ^h^ tV. ' ^'\ ^''^ twenty. third day of SeDtemhf>r ;„ 

th,s office the title of a boo'k, t e ri^ht\fhe eortlv'T!'^' ^'^''^ ''^P°«i^-d in 
the words following, to wit : ^ whereof they claim as proprietors, in 

""of^Tel'^PanVi^sl^S^^^ 
;; Wrongs as Colonl^;^S'Scfu^e"s"unon"'fr' «"\"- "^ ^'-ir Ma-itsand 
Writers. By Robert Walsh, Jro'^nn^ ^' ^'.'""^"'"^ "^ ^''^ B"tish 
"scelusrepetit, suoque premitur'exempTo 'ocS' £t'e H^^'^"^ ^ ^"^-- 

S^^ r --r^^^ Sta;es. entitled »An 

an act entitled «An act for the enconra.^l'nf r ,' A" ^^^ supplementary to 
pies of maps, charts, and books, to theSo" and ''''"'"^ ^^ ^^^"""^ '^^ -- 
during the times therein mentioned 'and ivt. v P'^Pf'^tors of such copies, 
arts ofdesigning. engraving, and^thing'hi^l^Safa^S^o^heT'pl 

ri».i r u ^' CALDWELL, 

Clerk of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



63l9/\} \ 



^ 

^ 



ID]EIDII©A^Il®m 



To ROBERT OLIVER, Esq. 

OF BALTIMORE 



Dear Sir, 

This is a clumsy volume, and its tenor may not be 
exactly in unison with your opinions and predilections. 
I could, therefore, have wished to attach your name rather 
to its intended adjunct, which may have higher claims to 
regard; but I am anxious to improve the first opportunity 
of bearing public testimony to a character, which an ac- 
quaintance of many years, has taught me to view as of un- 
common worth and elevation. ,It is only a few months 
ago that your merits were commemorated in your native 
land, in a strain which those inhabitants of your adopted 
country, who know you well, cannot deem too lofty, nor 
hesitate to re-echo. In proclaiming you public-spirited, 
open-hearted, and munificently hospitable, the distinguish- 
ed assemblage in Dublin spoke as our experience would 
have led us to speak, A remarkable strength of natural 
abilities, maintained in full exertion by an active, vehe- 
ment spirit, and the favour of fortune seconding a sound 
judgment and steadfast faith in commercial dealings, have 
put you in possession of an ample estate, to which you daily 
vindicate your title by a noble use of it in the offices of 
beneficence and friendship. 



IV DEDICATION. 

I have another object in addressing you thus in my ca- 
pacity of author. It is, to witness, — in opposition to the 
false relations of the British travellers, — that the native 
American is not backward in recognizing and honouring 
the estimable qualities and just pretensions of a fellow citi- 
zen of foreign birth. We make no distinctions and have 
no reserved feelings, where respect and confidence are 
abstractly due: if, blended and compounded as we are, the 
case could be otherwise, it would not certainly be so in 
reference to Irishmen. With them, the process of as- 
similation in all respects, is more easy and natural than 
with any other people. America owes them much. She 
cannot but sympathize deeply in the wrongs they have 
suffered at home. In the same nation in which they have 
always found a tyrannical mistress, she, throughout her 
colonial existence, found a jealous step-mother, and now 
finds a malevolent scold. 

I am, dear sir, 

truly and affectionately, 
your obedient servant, 

Robert Walsh,^ jr. 

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 1819. 



50 



PREFACE 
OF THE AUTHOR 



1. About the end of the month of January last, I 
undertook to prepare for the press, a Survey of the insti- 
tutions and resources of the American repubhc; and of the 
real character and condition of the American people. A 
work of this kind, wrought from authentic information, 
appeared to me to constitute the best refutation of the 
slanders, which are incessantly heaped upon us by the 
British writers. In assuming the task, I expected to be 
able to complete it in the course of the present summer; 
and accordingly set on foot such enquiries in the several 
divisions of the Union, as the design prescribed. After 
pursuing my first arrangements for a couple of months, I 
discovered that I had not duly measured the delays inci- 
dent to the collection of facts, over so extensive a surface, 
and through the agency of gentlemen engrossed, for the 
most part, by professional affairs. Finding that I must 
allow a longer term than was at first proposed, for the ac- 
cumulation of materials, I fell upon the plan of making up, 
in the interval, a preliminary volume, which should em- 
brace a review of the dispositions and conduct of Great 
Britain towards this country, from the earliest period; 
and a collateral retaliation for her continued injustice and 
invective. 

What I now submit to the public, is the fruit of the plan 
just mentioned. It is not offered as a digested book; but 



VI PREFACE. 

as a series of Notes and Illustrations; and it could not be 
other, from the shortness of the time within which it has 
been composed. The immediate object required, indeed, 
nothing more. I have to apologize rather for the bulk of the 
volume, which exceeds my own expectation; and is owing 
to the impression under which I proceeded, that the quota- 
tions, instructive in themselves, and useful towards eluci- 
dation and proof, should not be curtailed for the sake of 
economizing a certain number of pages. As respects dic- 
tion, I have aimed at clearness and significancy alone. 
What has been instantly transferred from the desk to the 
press, must necessarily be liable to the reproach of diffu- 
sion and roughness. It is not a model of style or of epitome 
that is wanting on such an occasion as the British writers 
have created, for the exertion of our faculties of literary 
defence, whatever these may be; but an aggregation of 
facts pointedly told, and the production in detail of what- 
ever tends to rectify perverse, or propagate just opinions. 

My purpose in this undertaking generally, is not merely 
to assert the merits of this calumniated country; I wish to 
repel actively, and, if possible, to arrest, the war which is 
waged without stint or intermission, upon our national re- 
putation. This, it now appears to me, cannot be done 
without combating on the offensive; without making in- 
roads into the quarters of the restless enemy. 

I had long indulged the hope, in common with those 
Americans who were best affected towards Great Bri- 
tain, that the false and contumelious language of the 
higher class at least, of her literary censors, would be 
corrected by the strong relief, in which our real condition 
and character were daily placing themselves before the 
world. We expected that another tone more conformable 
to truth and sound policy would be adopted, when we had 
on our side the degree of notoriety as to those points, which 
usually overawes and represses any degree of assurance in 
the spirit of envy and arrogance. 

But the disappointment is complete, for every American 
who has paid attention to the tenor of the late British 
writings and speeches, inwhich reference is made to these 



PREFACE. Vll 

United States. The Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, 
have, within the twelvemonth past, by. the excesses of 
obloquy into which they have given from the most unwor- 
thy apprehensions, put beyond question the insufficiency 
of any amount of evidence, and of all the admitted laws of 
probability and reasoning, to work the refbrmation to 
which I have alluded. 

It was, too, believed by many, that the Britisli writers 
would assign some bounds to their attacks, as long as we 
forbore to recriminate; and it was thought harsh and un- 
charitable to touch the sores and blotches of the British 
nation, on account of the malevolence and folly of a few 
individuals, or of a party, within her bosom. The whole 
is proved to be mere illusion. There is no intemper- 
ance of provocation, which could have excited more 
rancour, and led to fiercer and wider defamation, than 
we find in the two articles of the forty first number of 
the (Quarterly Review, which treat of American affairs. 
The whig journals have begun to rail in the same strain: 
the Opposition have joined, with the ministerial party, even 
on the floor of parliament, in a hue and cry against 
" American ambition and cruelty;" and in affecting to cre- 
dit the coarse inventions of Englishmen who have either 
visited us for the express purpose of manufacturing hbels, 
or betaken themselves to this expedient on their return 
home, as a profitable speculation. It is enough, that the 
desire of emigratmg to the United States should spread 
among the population of England, in an extent deemed 
invidious, or hurtful; that the territorial security of the 
Americans on one side should appear about being ren- 
dered complete, with some possible danger to the stability 
of the British empire in the West Indies, to throw the 
British politicians of every rank, and denomination, into 
paroxysms of despite and jealousy, and to enlist them in a 
common scheme of misrepresentation which may inspire 
the British farmer and artisan with a horror of republi- 
can America, and the nations of the world with a distrust 
of the spirit of her government. 
We cannot defeat their purpose as far as their country- 



VUl PREFACE. 

men are concerned; but we may guard the better against 
the effects of the .hatred and contempt which they labour 
to inculcate, by acquainting ourselves thoroughly with the 
true nature and scope of their designs. If we have, as I 
verily believe, a band of implacable and indefatigable foes, 
in those who direct the public affairs, and mould the pub- 
lic mind, of Great Britain, we should be fully alive to 
the fact, and alert in using the means in our power, of 
restraining the effusions of their mahce. National an- 
tipathies are to be deprecated in themselves; to excite 
them wantonly, is an offence against humanity and re- 
ligion; but we are not censurable, if they are produced 
incidentally, by the course which self-defence may require 
of us to pursue. It is the English writer who becomes 
doubly culpable, if his pertinacity in defaming the United 
States, be such as to leave to the American, whose right 
it is to check this as well as every other form of hostility, 
no resource for the purpose, but the exhibition of what is 
odious and despicable in the character, conduct, and com- 
position of the British nation. 

There is much truth in the old maxim of the schools — 
retorquere non est respondere: to retort is not to reply. 
The present case forms an exception, however; for the 
British writers and orators never throw out their re- 
proaches against the United States, without putting Great 
Britain in glorious contrast; it is the excellence, the 
purity, and the liberty, and the comfort, which they see 
at home, that, they would fain have us believe, quicken 
their sensibility, and embitter the expression of their hate, 
to the evils and abuses abounding on this side the water. 
Thus, to expose their real spirit and aims, and to fortify 
the confidence in our relative merit, necessary to us in 
this struggle with systematic detraction, we are compelled 
to investigate and set forth the misery and turpitude by 
which they are surrounded, and the wrongs and insults 
of which we have had constantly to complain. This is 
not mere recrimination; it is resistance to degrading com- 
parisons and injurious pretensions; we tear off one of the 
many disguises which our enemies assume to facilitate 



PREFACE. IX 

their project of bringing us into disrepute with man- 
kind. 

It is, certainly, wretched sophistry to argue, as they do, 
from single instances of disorder and vice; and neither fair 
nor charitable to display only what is bad in a mixed system, 
in which the good may greatly predominate. We would 
not be entitled to follow this example, but for the purpose 
of repressing it, by shewing how severely Great Britain 
may suffer in her turn from its adoption elsewhere. Upon 
the principles of the logic which she has used against the 
United States, she might be proved to be the most misera- 
ble and wicked nation that has ever existed. The pub- 
licity which she gives to all her domestic transactions and 
circumstances; the discussion which her foreign policy 
and administration undergo, in and out of parliament, lay 
bare all her vulnerable points. Never before was such a 
mass of materials prepared for the satirist of national vices 
and distempers, as is to be found in the debates and re- 
ports of her legislature, and in the innumerable chronicles 
of her internal history, which, as we there have it, is but 
a tissue of the grossest enormities and the most cruel dis- 
tresses. 

In endeavouring to establish her invariable unkindness 
and injustice to this country, and her liability to reproach 
in an indefinite degree beyond ourselves, on the grounds 
of disparagement which she is never weary of repeating, 
it is not to American writers and travellers, to obscure and 
vulgar witnesses, labouring under the suspicion of national 
prejudice, personal pique, or gross venality, that I shall 
have recourse; but to British authorities of the highest 
standard; to British historians and legislators, and even 
to the very journals, which serve as the spiracles, through 
w^hich the torrents of venom are incessantly spouted against 
the American people. Our accusers in Great Britain 
have built their charges upon English testimony, and that 
the least respectable of its kind. I shall be found, in im- 
peaching her in return, to use not suspicious foreign, but, 
in almost every instance, unquestionable British state- 
ments; not the allegations of General Fillet — quite as 

Vol. I.—B* 



X PREFACE. 

trustworthy as those of the Jansons and Fearons— but 
the records of Parhament and the oracles of the British 
empire. Here, it cannot escape the reader, how much 
more dignified and warrantable the retaliation, than the 
attack ; and that, in repelling aggression with evidence 
derived from these sources, we do not descend to the level 
of those who bespatter us with ordure amassed by natural 
or hired scavengers of their own blood and temper. 

" The libels of the present day," said Mr. Burke, in 
his retort upon the Duke of Bedford, " are just of the 
same stuff as the libels of the past. But they derive an 
importance from the rank of the persons from whom 
they come, and the gravity of the place where they are 
uttered. In some way or other they ought to be noticed.^' 
We think and reason thus, in respect to the calumnies 
with which we have been lately assailed in Great Britain. 
All that is accumulated, for instance, in the Edinburgh 
and (Quarterly Reviews, in the articles which form the 
immediate provocation upon which I now write, is an old 
compost of vile ingredients and impure leven, in itself 
unfit to be handled, and much more unfit to be imitated. 
Those journals, however, exert an unrivalled influence 
over the British pubhc; they are not without considerable 
authority on the continent of Europe, where they are 
widely circulated; they have credit and sway with num- 
bers of readers, even in the United States: in the cata- 
logue of their authors and special patrons we find men of 
eminence, both in letters and politics; some who have a 
material share in the public councils of their country, and 
whose writings, on other subjects than the affairs of Ame- 
rica, possess a degree of excellence, which invests the 
pamphlets in question with a general character of great 
weight and value. 

2. I will pass from the instance of these Reviews to 
another, worthy of particular observation, on many ac- 
counts; in which, also, the merest, most hacknied ribaldry 
respecting America, is rendered important and memora- 



PREFACE. Xi 

ble by " the rank of the persons from whom it came, and 
the gravity of the place where it was uttered." 

Westminster school is one of the principal semina- 
ries of classical education, for the sons of the British 
nobility and gentry; for those who are destined, either 
by birthright or custom, to become her legislators and 
rulers; to wield the national power, and give the tone to 
national sentiment. It has been long the practice, in this 
institution, to exhibit annually a Latin play, of which the 
characters are filled by the senior students, about to be 
translated to one of the great universities. The perform- 
ance is attended by a crowd of great personages — by mi- 
nisters of state, dignitaries of the church, and patrician 
families; and all the eclat is given to the occasion of 
which we can suppose it susceptible A Latin prologue 
and epilogue, serving as specimens of scholarship, usually 
accompany the play. In an exhibition of the kind, which 
took place about the conclusion of our late war with Great 
Britain, the subject chosen for the epilogue was emigra- 
tion to the United States. It was treated in the form of a 
colloquy between a person preparing to embark, and a 
patriotic Englishman attempting to dissuade him from the 
adventure. Nothing can exceed the terseness of the lati- 
nity, but the virulence of the abuse lavished upon America, 
in this piece. Whatever the writings of the British tra- 
vellers could furnish, that was most injurious, and insult- 
ing to the American people, is here elaborately condensed, 
and imbued with a new and more active venom. The 
following is a translation of part of this classical lampoon. 

"DAVUS TO GETA. 

" Whither do you propose to fly ? Get. To Hesperia (America). 
— Da. What! to that country which is beyond the ocean; a coun- 
try barbarous in itself and inhabited by Barbarians! In that coun- 
try Geta, Astraea is not a virgin, but a virago : sometimes, as report 
goes, she is a drunkard, often a pugilist ; sometimes even a thief. 
Nor is it easy to say whether the tenor of their manners is more to 
be admired for simplicity or elegance : a negro wench, as we are 
told, waits on her master at table in native nudity; and a beau will 
strip himself to the waist, that he may dance unincumbered, and 
with more agility. Do you love your glass, every hour brings with 



Xll PREFACE, 

it a fresh bumper. There you have the gum-tickler^ the fihlegm- 
cutler, the gall-breaker., the antifogmatic. No man is a slave there, 
for negroes are not considered as of the human species in America. 
Every man thinks what he pleases, and does what he pleases. The 
youn^ men spurn the restraint of laws and of manners : his own 
inclination is there every man's sufficient diploma. Bridewell and 
the stews sufiphj them ivith senators^ and their respectable chief jus- 
tice is a worthless scoundrel. Does a senatorial orator dexterously 
aim to convince his antagonist? he spits plentifully in his face; 
and that this species of rhetoric may be more efficacious, tobacco 
furnishes an abundance of saliva for the purpose. The highest 
praise of a rnerchant is his skill in lying. Then their amusements I 
to gouge out an eye with the thumb, to skin the forehead, to bite 
0^ the nose! and to kill a man, is an admirable joke. Believe me, 
Geta, even if the black vessel of transportation you embark in, 
should bear you safely to this elysium of yours, the very passage 
would exhaust all your funds, and your whole life would be held in 
pledge, never to be redeemed : your destiny at last would be to 
feed the ratx of a prison. But come, think better of this scheme 
while you have it in your power. Let the ruined man^ the impious 
•wretch^ the outlaw., praise America; if you are yet in your senses, 
Geta, stay at home." 

The whole of the dialogue may be read in the Port 
Folio, into which it was copied in the year 1816, from 
the English Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1815, to 
which it was committed thus for circulation, three months 
after the signature of the treaty of peace and amity be- 
tween Great Britain and the United States. The able 
writer who introduced it into the American journal, at- 
tached to it a commentary which equally deserves to be 
read entire, and of which I adopt the following passages, 
as speaking what is due from me to the occasion. 

" Thus it is, that at an age when impressions are apt to take the 
strongest hold of the mind, — with the associations most calculated 
to give vividness and effect to the sentiments uttered — at the direc- 
tion and under the superintendence of the reverend preceptors in 
the first school of classical education that Great Britain can boast- 
in the presence, and with the sanction of persons deemed highly 
respectable for rank, learning, character, and station — the young 
sons of the nobility and gentry of England are taught to pronounce, 
applaud, and give effect to, the most glaring and disgusting false- 
hoods, and the most virulent and vulgar abuse against this country 
and its inkabitants universally. 



PREFACE. Xlll 

'■'There is nothing in the invectives of the Quarterly Review 
more abusive and flagitious than this epilogue. I am no advocate 
for keeping up national animosity, but I do not approve of the doc- 
trine of non-resistance; nor do I feel the obligation upon Ameri- 
cans of submitting tamely to the insult, vi'hen the persons vi'ho have 
descended to these aspersions are themselves liable to the retort. 
Had this attack been the hasty effusion of a political partizan, or 
the witty scurrility of a writer whose sarcastic talent furnishes his 
daily bread, or had we been subjected even to the mistaken correc- 
tion of a well-meaning observer, it nnight have been parsed over : 
but this, the studied, deliberate composition of deep-rooted enmity, 
deserves no quarter. One style of reply to impartial and friendly 
reprehension, another to the sarcastic I'ancour of a 'proud and in 
suiting foe.' 

" It may be, as it seems to be, the intention in Great Britain, to 
educate their youth in sentiments of the most sarcastic and rancor- 
ous hostility towards America; and I daresay, the attempt will 
succeed ; and I dare aver also, that it will be met, as it naturally 
must, by correspondent feelings on this side the water." 

3. We were not altogether ignorant, in the United 
States, that much of the favour shown to us, since the 
commencement of the present century, by the whig party 
in parliament, and their connexions out of doors, arose 
from the relation of a minority or opposition, in which 
they stood in the British government. Yet we believed, 
that there was enough of real cordiality in their feelings, 
and of elevation in their sentiments, to prevent them, at 
all times, from countenancing gross misrepresentations of 
our condition and character, and raising groundless cla- 
mours against our political transactions and views; from 
setting us in a false or invidious light, merely to embarrass 
and discredit the ministry, or to promote some domestic 
ends, such as those of checking emigration, and counter- 
acting extravagant plans of parliamentary reform. An 
attentive observation of the language concerning our af- 
fairs, held of late by the whig journals and the par- 
liamentary opposition, has convinced me that we were 
deceived in supposing they had not always acted, in rela- 
tion to this country, altogether from party feelings and 
aims, and would not readily sacrifice justice and truth, 
where it was concerned, to selfish considerations. 

There is but one interpretation to be put upon the 



XIV PREFACE. 

course they have taken, in regard to the execution of 
Ambrister and Arbuthnot, and the agreement between 
Spain and the United States for the transfer of the Flo- 
ridas. It has been a system of exaggeration, not to say 
slander, designed to bring the ministry under the suspi- 
cion of pusillaniiiiity and supineness, and to recommend 
the assailants to the nation as the truer Britons; the more 
spirited lassertors and anxious guardians of her honour 
and interests. This accompHshed, it was immaterial what 
feuds and ruinous strife, and what injustice to the United 
States, might follow, if their clamours raised a ferment 
among the British people, and thus forced the ministry to 
pursue to extremity an unattainable redress, and frustrate 
a fair and equitable arrangement. Remark the artificial 
tone and hyperboHcal representation, so well, though not 
primarily calculated to produce discord and aversion be- 
tween the two nations, — of leading members of the mi- 
nority in both houses of parliament. 

Mr. Tierney (House of Commons, May 19lh, 1819). 

" There was one foreign power to which he must direct the atten- 
tion of the house, Avith the same view as he had mentioned France 
— he meant America; — she was out of the pale of confederation; 
with her we had a separate treaty of peace ; towards her ive had 
long cast an eye of jealousy^ and it well became us to be firefiared 
for the worst. Let the house consider only what had happened in 
the last three months. Two British subjects had been executed by 
an American commander. There might be circumstances warrant- 
ing his conduct, and justifying, according to the law of nations, 
the approbation which his government had expressed ; but he (Mr. 
Tierney) was old enough to remember the time when, had two Bri- 
tish subjects been executed by a foreign state in time of peace, this 
country would not have put up with it quite so tamely. He knew 
the subject was a sore one, and he did not wish to press it farther. 

" While the noble lord opposite was at congress, two German 
princes could not have exchanged a few meadows without important 
expresses being despatched to him. But America owned no con- 
gress: because she was a long way off, ministers seemed to think 
that danger could not be near, and she was accordingly allowed to 
take up a position on a vast continent, as injurious as possible to the 
colonial returns of this country, putting them in imminent and un- 
deniable jeopardy. 

" Let the house and the country reflect then, if it was not the 



PREFACE. lHv 

duty of the government to do somethinsj to prepare the empire for 
possible mischiefs that might arise even from France and America." 

Sir Robert Wilson (June 4th, 1819) — "America aspired too 
much after her own aggrandizement. She had sent commissioners 
to South America to inspire hope and energy there. She had esta- 
blished a strong force in Texas, the province next to Mexico. Ame- 
rica would next demand Cuba." 

Mr. M'Donald (4th June, 1819) — " Such an aggrandizement of 
a powerful rival, as the acquisition of Florida, ought not to be 
passed over withrat a strict enquiry into the cause of this most ex- 
traordinary and unprecedented proceeding," Sec. 

And the Marquis of Lansdowne (in the House of Lords, May 
11th, 1819) — 

" Of all the events that could happen at this time, there was not 
one which so deeply aflfectcd the commercial interests of Great Bri- 
tain as the cession of the Floridas to the United States. The pos- 
session of those provinces would enable the Americans to annihilate 
the British trade in the West India seas; and give them an oppor- 
tunity of connecting themselves with the black governments there 
in a manner that might prove essentially injurious to our interests. 
The cession should have been guarded against at the congress of 
Vienna. No one at Vienna conceived it necessary to make any 
provision that should have the effect of preventing the aggrandize- 
ment of the United States. Hitherto there was a balance on which 
this country used to rely for her security, and it was an essential 
part of this balance to prevent the Floridas from being ceded to the 
United States. The conduct of -General Jackson in the execution 
of Ambrister and Arbuthnot was unfiaralleled in the history of 
civilized nations. If at the time when Copenhagen was taken by 
the British troops, Lord Cathcart, who then commanded them, 
found that several persons belonging to neutral couniries had been 
engaged in the defence of the place, and ordered them to be exe- 
cuted, on pretence that they had no right to take up arms against 
Great Britain, would not that act have been a gross violation of the 
laws of nations."* 

It may be doubted whether any measures which could 
have been taken at the Congress of Vienna to guard 
against the severance of Florida from Spain, would have 
proved effectual: but the idea of a concurrence of the 
members of that Congress in precautions against the 
aggrandizement of the tFnited States for the security of 

* The language of the ministerial journals, concerning General Jackson, 
bordered on the infuriate. Thus we read in the London Courier of March 25, 
1819. "General Jackson has the most villanous look ever beheld ; he is never ■ 
seen to smile. The hero is worthy- of the people, and the people of the hero."" 



XVI PREFACE. 

Great Britain! has something of the marvellous, besides 
implying an extraordinary sort of equity. IVe had not 
been called on to explain how our security might be 
affected by her aggrandizement in the West Indies; or 
how the balance on which we might have relied, was de- 
stroyed by " the positions" she had " taken up/' all over 
the world; positions commanding every sea of commer- 
cial importance; — Hehogoland; Malta, in addition to Gib- 
raltar; the Isle of France; the Island of Ceylon; the Prince 
of Wales' Island; New South Whales; the Cape of Good 
Hope. " Our noble station at the Cape of Good Hope," 
says a late London paper, " commands the commerce of 
the globe; it is the natural key to India; the bridle of 
America; the surface which we might people with hardy 
Englishmen is upwards of 100,000 square miles. Make 
the Cape a free port for the nations of Europe, and tve 
banish JVorth America from the Imlian seas.'' The 
powers of the Continent may smile when they find Great 
Britain, while herself adding constantly new kingdoms to 
her dominions in the East, and grasping at every mari- 
time station of consequence in the four quarters of the 
globe, exclaiming against xlmerican ambition and aggran- 
dizement, because the United States had acquired a con- 
tiguous province, from which, if in foreign hands, they 
must be subject to the severest annoyance, — by fair nego-' 
tiatron, and with the relinquishment of large pecuniary 
claims, and well-founded pretensions to territory of much 
greater extent and intrinsic value. 

The American government and people are as little 
likely "to demand the Island of Cuba," as they are "to 
connect themselves with the black governments of the 
West Indies." They want no slave islands; and to insti- 
gate the blacks of Hayti to foment and protect insurrec- 
tion in the British islands (for this must be meant by the 
Marquis of Lansdowne) is an atrocity of which they must 
ever be incapable, though Great Britain, in her next war 
with us, should repeat the example which she has here- 
tofore given, of exciting the negroes of the southern 
states to supplant and butcher their masters. The case 



PREFACE. XVll 

which the British Peer selected to illustrate the justness 
of his sentence upon general Jackson, is every way an 
unfortunate one for the purpose. His lordship and all 
his colleagues of the Opposition had denounced the attacii 
upon Copenhagen as a heinous aggression; to be pa- 
ralleled in treachery and outrage, only by Bonaparte's 
invasion of Spain. What parity of reason, then, in the 
supposed case of lord Cathcart putting to death the 
strangers whom he might have found assisting in the de- 
fence of the capital of a civilized power, a member of the 
European christian commonwealth, so unexpectedly and 
iniquitously attacked; and that of the American general 
pursuing a savage horde into an adjacent territory, from 
which it had issued to desolate the American frontier, 
and there executing two European adventurers, proved 
to be its instigators and accomplices.'^ As the Danes 
did not follow the practice of massacreing their pri- 
soners, the strangers who might have identified them- 
selves with them, would not, when seized, have been 
subject to the punishment of death by retaliation, as 
were the allies of the Seminoles, even under the Euro- 
pean law of nations. If the custom of Europe be deter- 
minative of that law in any particular, it may be confi- 
dently invoked in favour of the execution of Arbuthnot 
and Ambrister, on the supposition that they w^ere actually 
leagued with the Indians, as the British ministry have ad- 
mitted; for, during the great wars of the Germans and 
Poles against the Turks, death was the immediate lot 
of the European christian found acting on the side of 
the infidels. So, there has never been the least hesita- 
tion in the Mediterranean waters and territories, about 
despatching at once the renegade, no matter of what 
christian country, taken in arms on board a Barbary cor- 
sair, or in a predatory descent upon the coast. 

I find it difficult to reconcile the full knowledge which 
the Marquis of Lansdowne must possess of the history of 
the British empire in India, and in Ireland, with his de- 
claration, that " the conduct of the American gene al was 
unparalleled in the history of civilized nations." This de- 

Vol. I.~C* 



XVIU PREFACE. 

claration, I deem the more remarkable, as it was only 
two months before (March 3, 1819,) that, on the occasion 
of the vote of thanks moved to Lord Hastings and the 
British generals in India, the Marquis of Lansdowne 
made, in the House of Lords, the following statement, in- 
cluding, as will be seen, a case of at least as criminal an 
aspect as that of the American general. 

The Marquis of Lansdowne said : " He felt it his duty to observe, 
that there appeared on the face of the papers before their lord- 
ships, a transaction which could not be passed over in silence — a 
transaction which must be made the subject of some expression of 
censure, if thanks were to be generally voted to the whole army of 
India. — The transaction to which he alluded, was the execution of 
the Killedar of the fort of Talneir. It appeared, that after a vigor- 
ous resistance made by the fort, this commander had come out and 
surrendered. The garrison left in the fort, however, resisted. The 
fort was then attacked by the British army, and taken ; and the 
■whole of the garrison was put to the sword. However much he 
might regret such a proceeding, he did not make it the subject of 
complaint. Perhaps, under the circumstances of the case, it was 
unavoidable ; but what must be their lordship's opinion of the 
transaction that followed. The Killedar, who had remained in the 
possession of the British commander, was deliberately put to death. 
It was impossible to leave this horrible circumstance out of view in 
any vote of thanks Avhich their lordships should give. The des- 
patch of Sir Thomas Hislop states, that whether the Killedar was 
accessory to the treachery of the garrison or not, he was justly 
yiunished with death on account of his rebellion in the first instance. 
There was no ground for concluding that this unfortunate com- 
mander had any concert v/ith the garrison in their treachery ; but, 
according to every rule of European war, some proof of that con- 
cert ought to have been exhibited, before the right of punishing 
him was assumed. As to the assertion, that he was guilty of re- 
bellion in holding out after his master had submitted and conclud- 
ed a treaty of peace, that was an offence over which a Britsh autho- 
rity could have no legal cognizance. He was accountable for his 
rebellion to Holkar only. But how was he to know that he was in 
rebellion ? How was he apprised of the conclusion of the treaty ? 
He had no information of it but through the report of the British 
army. Would their lordships say that upon information received 
from an enemy the commander of a fortress was bound to surren- 
der, or even to discontinue hostilities, and that he was liable to the 
punishment of death if he refused ? If, indeed, he had been a party 
to the treachery of the garrison, he nnight have been, for that act, 
liable to punishment, after an inquiry before a regular military tri- 



PREFACE. XIX 

bunal ; but with the other charge of rebellion the British com- 
mander could'have nothing to do." 

I am particularly struck with another example of 
disingenuousness and exaggeration on the part of our 
friends of the opposition, which I have now before me in 
a speech of Earl Grey, at the New Castle Fox dinner of 
the 31st. of December, 1818. This nobleman stands, 
with Lord Grenville, at the head of the old whigs; he 
was trained by the side of Fox, and deserved to be called 
the Diomedes of the band who waged so powerful a war 
in the House of Commons under that leader. His zeal 
for parliamentary reform even surpassed that of his col- 
leagues; but, on his ascension to the House of Lords, his 
feelings and views on this subject underwent a material 
change; although he still continued inseparable in other 
questions from his first associations, and, in his American 
politics, ranked with the most strenuous antagonists of 
the ministerial system. As the imagination of a large 
proportion of the British politicians has been particularly 
affected with the extensive emigrations, that of his lord- 
ship is disturbed in an especial manner, with the cry for 
universal suffrage and annual parliaments; and he proba- 
bly feels the more anxious to discredit these innovations, 
from having himself taken the lead in the House of Com- 
mons in arraigning the constitution of the British legisla- 
ture. The example of America, as to the point of re- 
presentation, seemed naturally to interfere with his object, 
and was therefore to be invalidated, not merely by being 
shown to have no application to the circumstances of 
Great Britain, but by being exhibited as of a most malig- 
nant and revolting character in itself To this design 1 
ascribe the use which he made, on the occasion above 
mentioned, of Fearon's " Sketches of America," and the 
character which he gave of the book and its author. I 
shall make the case better understood by transcribing 
that portion of the speech to which I allude, before I give, 
as I intend, some ghmpses of the true light in which the 
>Sketches are to be viewed, and must have been viewed. 



XX PREFACE. 

in fact, by the noble Earl. After drawing a frightful pic- 
tare of the state of England, he proceeded thus: 

" But thei'e is even a more dreadful instance than ours to be 
found in the history of a country whose popular constitution must 
furnish matter of much interesting observation to every lover of 
freedom. The constitution of America is free and popular in the 
largest sense. Now, what is the case in America? A gentleman 
was deputed by thirty-nine families, who had been driven by the 
necessities of the times to think of emigration — a melancholy proof 
of our present condition. On his report they were to depend, for the 
spirit of the country, and the inducements it might hold out to 
them. The gentleman's name is Fearon. He has published the 
report which he made to these persons, and his hook is full of the 
most valuable information, and is distinguished by the marks not 
only of an inquiring, observing, and intelligent mind, but of the 
greatest fairness and impartiality. What does Mr. Fearon say of 
the operation of their laws and of this boasted constitution?" 

His lordship then adduced, as decisive revelation, what 
Fearon has written concerning the process of election and 
the distribution of offices in America; and he concludes 
in these words — " This is Mr. Fearon 's statement, and I 
should obseive to you, that he is by no means a willing wit- 
ness on the subject. Why do I repeat these things.'^ Is it 
that I may depreciate the value of popular rights in your 
estimation.'' Far from it; I wish merely to show you 
that, under a sjstem which may appear more perfect, 
similar, or even greater abuses, may still exist than in 
England."*^ 

We must conclude that the orator had actually read the 
work on which and its author, he pronounced so lofty a 
panegyric; which he thus held out to the world as the 
source of the most authentic information concerning Ame- 
rican affairs. He has, in fact, by the latitude and em- 
phasis of his recommendation, become the sponsor of the 
whole. It is a serious accountabihty; and I must confess 
that I am surprised at the boldness of the proceeding. 

In the first place, as to the point of our elections and 
the distribution of public trusts, Fearon's allegations arc 
confined to the affaii-s of two states only, New York and 
Pennsylvania, and the choice of one federal officer, the 



PREFACE. XXI 

chief magistrate. It happens tliat those are precisely 
and notoriously the parts of the union, in vyhich the 
game of state politics, a comparatively insignificant one, 
bears the worst character and appearance. In them, 
there is more perhaps, of what, as long as human nature 
is not perfect with us, must exist in a certain measure, in 
the rest, — I mean paltry intrigue for petty offices, and in- 
terested effort to inHuence votes. Cases of some enor- 
mity may occur in the first line of abuse, and suffrages be 
sometimes given from mere party subserviency; but it is 
as absurd to compare what happens here in these respects, 
with what prevails in England, as it would be to compare 
the amount and description of the mendicity in our streets, 
or of the criminal dehnquency on our calendars, with those 
of which we read in Colquhoun's Treatises and the late 
Parliamentary Reports. 

Whoever talks of a degree of bribery and corruption., 
and undue influence in America, like that of the neighbour- 
hood of the treasury of London, and the theatres of English 
suffrage, whether the shires or boroughs, deals in the most 
extravagant hyperbole. Fearon only repeats on this sub- 
ject, what he pretends to have heard from two persons of 
his own country, Mr. Cobbett and Mr. Hulme, both of 
whom, be it remarked, peremptorily disclaim the language 
which he imputes to them, and accuse him of an impudent 
imposture. He might, perhaps, have read it in some of the 
wild declamations, which are published among us during 
the heat of a contested election, and from the exaggerat- 
ing spirit of party recrimination. But, nothing that has 
ever happened in this country, furnishes the least foun- 
dation for asserting broadly, ' that votes and places are 
bought and sold. Throughout the states, the right of suf- 
frage is exercised, in general, with independence and 
integrity, by freeholders jealous of their prerogative, 
strangers to the want and very idea of a largess, and too 
proud to submit to any dictation. The elections in New 
England, for instance, are marked by a strictness of de- 
corum, probity of spirit, and universal intelligence of 
action, such, as an European accustomed to ^icw the 



XXll PREFACE. 

people every where as populace, would not be capable of 
imagining.* 

On this subject, moreover, it is not what may be done 
or said in some of the large cities on the Atlantic coast, 
that furnishes a test of the practice among the mass of this 
nation. 

With respect to disorder and corruption in the system 
of voting and appointing to office, under the general go- 
vernment, the oracle of Lord Grey says no more, from 
himself, than that " he became acquainted with facts in 
Washington which no man could have induced him to 
believe without personal observation." With more than 
common discretion, he abstains from telling what those 
facts are, but proceeds to give an account of what he 
there heard respecting the " appointment" of the presi- 
dent by the caucus of congress, which he represents, in- 
deed, as a mandate issued to the electors in the different 
states, and never disobeyed. But Lord Grey could not 
have been so ignorant of the letter and whole analogy of 
our institutions, as to have understood this to be more, in 
form or fact, than a recommendation from a certain num- 
ber of members of congress assembled extra-officially, to 
the people at large, to vote for a particular individual as 
their chief magistrate. The proceeding is, certainly, an 
irregularity, and unsafe as a precedent; yet, so far, it can- 
not be said, to have been of practical injury, or of any real 

* "I have lived long in New England," said Dr. Dwight, the late distin- 
guished presi lent of Yale College, "and have never yet known a single shilling 
given to purchase a vote." TJiis is the testimony of one than whom no person 
could have had better opportunities of knowledge. He describes thus the 
manner of a New England election 

"In New England, on the morning of an election day, the electors assemble 
cither in a church or a town house, in the centre of the township, of which 
they are inhabitants. 

"The business of the day is sometimes introduced by a sermon, and very 
often by public prayer. A moderator is chosen: the \otes are given in with 
strict decency ; without a single debate ; without noise, or disorder, or drink ; 
and with not a little of the sobriety, seen in religious assemblies. The meeting 
is then dissolved; the inhabitants return quietly to their homes, and have 
neither battles nor disputes. I do not believe that a single -icomaii, /loinid or free, 
ever appealed at an election in J\'eiu Evghind si\\c<t the colonization of tiie coun- 
try. It would be as much as her character was worth." 

Jieply to the Quarterly Rcviexvcrs, 181.5. 



PREFACE. XXlll 

significance. I believe it is not doubted by any one, but 
that the personages who have been elected in succession 
to the office of president, and particularly the one who 
now fills it, would have succeeded equally with the people, 
without the forward counsel of such an assembly; and, 
it seems to me, no less certain, that it is not in the power 
of any cabal of whatever composition, to impose any man 
upon the people as their chief magistrate; to effect the 
adoption of one to whom the preference would not be 
given spontaneously.* 

On the whole, all that is found in Fearon's book, touch- 
ing these matters, does not, when fairly examined, impli- 
cate in general, " the laws and boasted constitution" of 
America; for, there is nothing that calls in question the 
conformity of the representation in congress, with the 
theory of those laws and that constitution. The " case in 
America" admitted of application to the project of par- 
liamentary reform in England, only so far as it could be 
shewn, that the right of suffrage was not exercised honest- 
ly and independently in the election of congress; that this 
body was not free from corrupt dealings towards the peo- 
ple and within itself; and did not fully and fairly represent 
the nation. No accusations of the kind are hazarded by 
Fearon, and I am sure that whosoever might utter, would 
find it impossible to sustain them, in the opinion of im- 
partial minds. 

It may be worth while to obtain an idea of the ge- 
neral doctrines, concerning this country, of the book to 
which Earl Grey has so formally put his authoritative 
seal. I take at random, by way of specimen of that 

* "We kno-w," say the Edinburgh Reviewers, in their number for Decem- 
ber, 1818, (article on Universal Suffrage) " that the leaders of the democratic 
party who now predominate in their caucus or committee at Washins^'ton, do, 
in effect, nominate to all the importa7it offices in JVorth Jlmenca." It is inconceiv- 
able how such an assertion as this, could liave been risqued in a publication 
likely to find its way into the United States. I scarcely need add that no one 
in this co\intry ever before heard of a standing committee of the kind ; and 
that no such nomination takes place, beyond the occasional recommendation 
to the president, by members of congress, or others, in their individual capaci- 
ty, of persons who are soliciting offices, or on whom it is thought desirable that 
they should be conferred. 



XXIV PREFACE. 

"most valuable information with which it is full,'' the 
lollowing passages. 

" No species of correction is allowed in the American schools; 
children even at home are perfectly independent, (p. 39.) A cold, 
uniform bigotry seems to pervade all religious sects, (p. 48.) Clean- 
liness is scarcely known on this side of the Atlantic, (p. 80.) The 
tradesmen here (Philadelphia) are less intelligent than men follow- 
ing the like occupations in England, (p. 161.) The Americans are 
most remarkable for complete and general coldness of character 
and disposition — a cold blooded callousness of disposition, (p. 166.) 
Whatever degree of religious intelligence exists is confined to the 
clergy, (p. 167.) The colour of the young females of Philadel- 
phia is produced by art : the junior branches of the Society of 
Friends there, are not at all deficient in the practice of rougeing. 
(p. 168.) The dirk is the inseparable companion of all classes in 
the state of Illinois, (p 262.) — The United States are cursed with a 
fiofiulation undeserving of their exuberant soil and free government. 
(p. 273.) The American lawyers are at least thirty-three and a 
third per cent, lower than their brethren in England, (p. 317.) The 
Americans, neglecting to encourage any pursuits, either indivi- 
dually or collectively, which may be called mental^ they appear, as 
a nation, to have sunk into habits of indolence and indifference: 
they are neither lively in their tempers nor generous in their dispo- 
sitions, Sec* (p. 362.) We do not meet in America with even an 
approach to simplicity and honesty of mind. (p. 363.) The nation 
at large dislike England, and yet, both individually and collectively, 
would be offended,' should a hint be expressed that they were of 
Irish or of Dutch, and not of English descent, (p. 368.) No peo- 
ple are so vain as the Americans ; their self-estimation and cool- 
headed bombast, when speaking of themselves or of their country, 
are quite ludicrous, (p. 368.) R-very man in America thinks he 
has arrived at perfection, (p. 368.) Every American considers that 
it is impossible for a foreigner to teach him any thing, and that his 
head contains a perfect encyclopaedia, (p. 369.) A non-intercouVse 
act seems to have passed against the sciences, morals, and literature, 
in America, (p. 371.) The sexes seem ranked as distinct races of 
beings, between whom social converse is rarely to be held. A uni- 
versal neglect of either mental or domestic knowledge appears to 
exist among the females here, as compared with those of England, 
(p. 377.) Such is the habitual indolence of the American people, 
and their indifference nvith regard to public affairs, that occurrences 



* So Lieutenant Hall, in his bonk of Travels in America, says. " The Ame- 
ricans are habitually serious and silent; tiieir spirits are seldom elevated!!" 
Apathy, taciturnity, are traits which we did not suspect to exist in our cliu- 
rarter 



PREFACE. XXV 

©f first rate importance are known but by few individuals, (p. 385.) 
There would appear to be placed in the very stamina of the people 
a coldness, a selfishness, and a spirit of conceit, which form strong 
barriers against improvement." (p. 391.) 

Every particular assertion in this mediey is in the 
nature of antiphrasis; and the general allegations are 
slanderous. The extravagance of several of them be- 
trays not only a libellous disposition, but an utter want 
of judgment, in the writer. 1 will illustrate further "that 
fairness and impartiality," which Earl Grey ascribes 
to him in the superlative degree. He states (p. 46,) that 
in New York all the churches (forty-five in number) are 
well filled on the Sunday. The fact being rather credita- 
ble to that community, it was necessary to give it another 
direction; and this is done by the following arbitrary, 
ridiculous, and malevolent interpretation. "The great 
proportion of attendants at any particular church appear 
to select it, either because they are acquainted with the 
preacher, or that it is frequented by fashionable compa- 
ny, or their great-grandmother went tJiere, before the re- 
volution, or because their interests will be promoted by 
so doing." We are not told the particular indication or 
circumstance by which this appeared. Wherever the re- 
ligious worship and spirit of thi§ country are brought 
into view, it is in the same strain that they are celebrated; 
and ignorance of the scriptures is perpetually charged 
upon the whole body of a people by whom the bible is, 
doubtless, more generally possessed and read, in family, 
than by any other on earth.* 

Our traveller, when he cannot venture to affirm an 
opprobrious fact, as of his own knowledge, has recourse 
to this form of speech, " I have reason to believe" — a 
convenient mode of calumniating, when, as uniformly 
happens with him, the reason is not assigned. Thus, 
he says (p. 171), in relation to Philadelphia, — a city as 
remarkable for domestic neatness, order, morality, and 



* It is used in all the schools in the interior, and these receive nearly everv 
native white. 

Vol. I.— D* 



XXVI PREFACE. 



happiness as any which has evet existed, — "Aithoiigl'i 
the eyes and ears of a stranger are not insulted, in the 
openness of noonday, with evidence of hardened pro- 
fligacy, I have, nevertheless, reason to believe in its ex- 
istence to a very great extent. TIic habits of the people 
are marked by caution and secresy. There is here a la- 
mentable want of cleanliness, in such matters as are re- 
moved from the public eye; an ignorance of order and 
neatness in domestic life." Again, when in Kentucky, 
" I have not seen the practice of gouging occui", though 
I have good reason to believe in its existence;" and, 
when at New Orleans, " At a tavern opposite, I witnessed 
a personal conflict, in which / suppose one of the parties 
was dirked." Adn)irably "fair and impartial!" 

According to this " enquiring, observing and intelligent 
gentleman^' (p. 46, 373,) '• conversation in American so- 
ciety, that even of the ladies, turns entirely upon the 
capture of the Guerriere, and the battle of New Orleans; 
the price of flour and cotton, and the bad conduct and 
inferior nature of 'niggars.' " He dialogues much as he 
goes along, and all his American interlocutors, of what- 
ever degree, talk in the same cant phrases of the most 
vulgar cacophony. Their language, on all occasions, is 
provincial and plebeian* This circumstance alone might 
have excited in the mind of Lord Grey a distrust of his 
gentleman's candour, or of the cast of his associations^, 
both in this country and at home. The dramatic style of 
narrative, whether in an historian or traveller, is, at best, 
open to suspicion. 

Mr. Fearon insists earnestly upon "the jealousy and 
dislike of foreigners rooted in the breasts of all the native 
Americans." He returns often to this topic, and will 
have it that, " throughout the states, there is a strong line 
of distinction drawn between citizens of native and of 
foreign birth." (P. 347.) The ample portion which is en- 
joyed by persons of the last description, of whatever 
means of comfort, power, distinction this country affords — 
the manner in which we are consubstantiated and evened 
throughout the body politic and social, render it unneces- 



PREFACE. XXVll 

sary for me to deny the absurd allegation; but I mention 
it, and the earnestness with which it is made, as striking 
particulais of the evidence which the sketches themselves 
offered to the British earl, of their being mainly designed 
to discourage emigration to the United States. The dis- 
tinct, elaborate attempt which is made in them, to refute 
and disgrace the publications of Mr. Birbeck, is addi- 
tional proof of this drift, which we can hardly believe 
could have escaped the observation of his lordship, though 
we should admit that he overlooked the sweeping calum- 
nies and sinistrous interpretations with which the work 
abounds, and the constant solicitude of the author to 
qualify what favourable testimony he is compelled to bear, 
in such a way as to defeat its allurement 

But, it is not only of flippancy and rancour that we could 
convict this traveller, throughout: in several instances he 
might be shown to be guilty of deliberate, circumstantial 
falsehood. I will select one which may represent his 
whole book, and in which the Quarterly Review is impli- 
cated. In his report from Philadelphia, dated October IS, 
1817, he writes thus: — 

" Seeing the following advertisement in the newspapers, put in 
by the captain and owiiers of the vessel referred to, I visited the 
ship, in company with a bootmaker of this city. 

' THE PASSENGERS 

' On board the bri^^ Bubona, from Amsterdam, and who are wil- 

* ling to engage themselves for a limited lime, to defray the ex- 
'penses of their passage, consist of, Sec. Apply on board of the 

* Biibona^ opposite Callowhill street, in the river Delaware, or to W, 

* Odlin &: Co. No, 38, South Wharves.' 

" As we ascended the side of this h\ilk, a most revolting scene of 
want and misery presented itself. The eye involuntarily turned for 
some relief from the horrible picture of human suffering, which 

this living sepulchre afforded. Mr. enquired if there were 

any shoemakers on board. The captain advaiictd: his afifiearance 
bespoke his office; he is an American.) tally determined^ and with an 
eye that flashes with Algerine crueltij. He called in the Dutch lan- 
guage for shoemakers, and never can I forget the scene that follow- 
ed. The poor fellows came running up with unspeakable delight, 
no doubt anticipating a relief from their loathsome dungeon. Their 



XXVIU I'REFxVCE. 

clothes, if rags deserve that denomination, actually perfumed the 
air. Some were without' shirts, others had this article of dress, but 
of a quality as coarse as the worst pacHing cloth. I enquired of 
several if they could speak English. They smiled, and gabbled. 
' No Engly, no Engly, — one Engly talk ship.' The deck was filthy. 
The cooking, washing, and necessary department, were close toge- 
ther. Such is the mercenary barbarity of the Americans who are 
engaged in this trade, that they crammed into one of those vessels 
500 passengers, 80 of whom died on the passage." 

This account is quoted with evident satisfaction, in the 
(Quarterly Review, for May, 1819, and the reviewer adds 
from himself — " The infamous traffic is confined, ex- 
clusively, to American vessels.^' 

I have thought it w^orth while to ascertain the facts of 
the case, and they are as follows: — The Brig Bubona in 
question was a British vessel, from Sunderland, in Eng- 
land; she was British property, and navigated on British 
account; her crew was British, and her captain an Eng- 
lishman, by the name of William Garterell. On arriving 
in the port of Philadelphia, he selected as his factors, the 
Messrs. Odlin and Co. merchants of that city, whom 
Fearon falsely represents as the owners of the vessel. 
The captain was not " tall," but about the middle size, 
or rather below it, and his countenance had an open, 
agreeable expression. What is more: of the vessels 
that entered the port of Philadelphia in the years 1816, 
and 1817, laden with redemptioners from the continent 
of Europe, the greater number was foreign; these 
amounted to ten, of which five were British in British 
employment; namely, the Brig Bubona, above mentioned: 
the ship Zenophon, captain Goodwin; the brig Constantia, 
captain Janson; the brig William, captain Arrowsmith, 
and brig William, captain Danton.* The condition of 
the redemptioners on board the British vessels was no bet- 
ter than in the others of whatever nation, engaged in the 
"infamous traffic." 

I derive these particulars from unquestionable sources; 

* The other foreign vessels (Prussian and Haneseatic.) were, ship Vrovv Ca- 
thrina, captain John Van Dyle ; brig Bonifacias, captain Leitman ; brig Concor 
dia, captain Diedrickson ; ship Vrow Elizabeth, captain Blankman, SiC. 



PREFACE. XXIX 

—the Mr. Woodbridge Odlm, who transacted the busi- 
ness of the Bubona; and Mr. Andrew Leinau, a respecta- 
ble inhabitant ot" Philadelphia, who served as general 
agent for the foreign redemptioner ships, as they were 
styled, and who has in his hands official vouchers, which 
I have examined, of their respective national character, 
the number of their passengers, &-c. It is known, more- 
over, that as soon as the abuses practised in the trade 
became notorious, the American Congress passed a law 
designed to prevent the recurrence of them, and remark- 
able for the humanity and efficaciousness of its precau- 
tions. 

If Fearon really visited the Bubona, which may be 
doubted, he, an Englishman, could not have mistaken 
her national character, nor that of the captain. This 
" tall American, with an eye flashing Algerine cruelty,"" 
is a phantasm manifestly intended to heighten the injuri- 
ous effect of the whole malignant fiction. So the use of 
the present tense by the (Quarterly Reviewers, in their 
unwarrantable assertion, argues the design of giving it 
to be understood, that the trade is still carried on by 
American vessels, with the same abuses as existed before 
the passage of the preventive law. 

Whether Earl Grey has found " the greatest fairness 
and impartiality" in the article of the (Quarterly Review, 
on Fearon's Sketches, as well as in the latter, I know not; 
but it is certain that the noble lord and the reviewer dif- 
fer much in their views of the character of the traveller, 
" We find Mr. Fearon," says the reviewer, " whenever 
England is concerned, venting his ignorant sneers, or in- 
dulging his spiteful calumnies, at the expense of decency 
and truth: he crouches with base servility before Cobbet; 
he grossly libels his fair countrywomen; he is sohcitous to 
entice the poor of Europe from their country, by fallacies 
and lies; he has greedily seized upon every opportunity of 
traducing the best and bravest officers of England; his 
prejudices are rooted in the profoundest ignorance; he 
deals in flippant and frequent abuse of scripture; he is evi- 
dently a man of very limited faculties; he is in a state of 



XXX PREFACE, 

perpetual childhood; his total want of knowledge is suffi* 
ciently apparent, &c." It is a witness thus blackened, 
blighted, and stultified by themselves, and whom in fact, 
they convict, in their examination of his book, of gross in- 
consistency and prevarication, that the master critics of 
London bring forward to explode the pretensions of the 
United States to any degree of moral worth, intellectual 
dignity, or physical comfort. It is upon his testimony, 
" who violates truth and decency, ivhenever England is 
concerned,'^ they affect to believe, and would have the 
world believe, besides what, I have quoted from him, 
and a multitude of other general imputations and parti- 
cular calumnies, that — "the churches in America are 
filled by fanatics, hypocrites, and buffoons;" that "gain 
is the education, the morals, the politics, the theology, 
and stands instead of the domestic comfort of all ages and 
classes of Americans ;" that " the worst degree of corrup- 
tion which the inventive malice of the worst Jacobin ever 
charged upon the government of England, is more than 
realized at the American capital;" that "every election 
in America, from the presideiit downwards, is carried on 
by bribery, corruption, and intrigue."* 

I cannot refrain, in dismissing Mr. Fearon and his 
compurgators, from offering to my American reader, 
some random testimony concerning the nature of those 
abuses in the system of British suffrage and representa- 
tion, greater than which Lord Grey is pleased to believe, 
may or do exist under that of the United States. 

In the year 1793, the honourable Mr. Grey, then a 
member of the House of Commons, — now Earl Grey, 
and a member of the House of Peers — made a motion in 
the Commons, for a reform in parliament, grounded upon 
a petition which he presented, and vehemently supported, 
and was understood to have himself composed. The 
following quotations are parts of that petition, and the 

* The Edinburgli Revie\\eis iiave also so far forgotten their slation, as to 
bestow on Fearon, the epithets ♦' eiihghtened and intelligent," and to recom- 
mend his book, with the simple reservation that he is " a //«/e given to exagge- 
ration in his views of vices and prejudices." See their 61st number. 



PREFACE. XXXI 

facts stated in them, which did not admit of denial, are 
equally true of the subject at the present day. 

" Your petitioners complain, that the elective franchise is so 
partially and unequally distributed, and is in so many instances 
committed to bodies of men of such very limited numbers; that the 
majority of your honourable House, is elected by less than fifteen 
thousand electors, which even if the male adults in the kingdom 
he estimated at so low a number as three millions, is not more than 
the two hundredth part of the people to be represented. 

"The second complaint of your petitioners, is founded on the 
unequal proportions in which the elective franchise is distributed, 
and in support of it, 

" They affirm, that seventy of your honourable members are re- 
turned by thirty-five places, where the right of voting is vested in 
burghage and other tenures of a similar description, and in which it 
would be to trifle with the patience of your honourable House, to 
mention any number of voters whatever, the elections at the places 
alluded to being notoriously a mere matter of form. And this your 
petitioners are ready to prove. 

" They affirm, that in addition to the seventy honourable mem- 
bers so chosen, ninety more of your honourable members are elect- 
ed by forty-six places, in none of which the number of voters 
exceeds fifty. And this your petitioners are ready to prove. 

"They affirm, that in addition to the hundred and sixty so elect- 
ed, thirty-seven more of your honourable members are elected by 
nineteen places, in none of which the number of voters exceeds one 
hundred. And this your petitioners are ready to prove. 

" They affirm, that in addition to the hundred and ninety-seven 
honourable members so chosen, fifty-two more are returned to 
serve in Parliament by twenty-six places, in none of which the 
number of voters exceeds two hundred. And this your petitioners 
are ready to prove. 

" They affirm, that in addition to two hundred and forty-nine so 
elected, twenty more are returned to serve in Parliament for coun- 
ties in Scotland, by less than one hundred electors each, and ten 
for counties in Scotland by less than two hundred and fifty each. 
And this your petitioners are ready to prove, even admitting the 
validity of fictitious votes. 

" They affirm, that in addition to the two hundred and seventy- 
nine so elected, thirteen districts of burghs of Scotland, not con- 
taining one hundred voters each, and two districts of burghs, not 
containing one hundred and twenty-five each, return fifteen more 
honourable members. And this your petitioners are ready to 
prove. And in this manner, according to the present state of your 
representation, two hundred and ninety-four of your honourable 
members are chosen, and being a majority of the entire House of 



XXXll PREFACE. 

Commons, are enabled to decide all questions in the name of the 
whole people of England and Scotland. 

" Religious opinions create an incapacity to vote. All Papists 
are excluded generally, and, by the operation of the test laws, Pro- 
testant dissenters are deprived of a voice in the election of repre- 
sentatives in about thirty boroughs, where the right of voting is 
confined to corporate officers alone; a deprivation the more unjusti- 
fiable, because, though considered as unworthy to vote, they are 
deemed capable of being elected, and may be the representatives of 
the very places for which they are disqualified from being the 
electors. 

" A man paying taxes to any amount, how great soever, for his 
domestic establishment, does not thereby obtain a right to vote, un- 
less his residence be in some borough where that right is vested in 
the inhabitants. This exception operates in sixty places, of which 
twenty-eight do not contain three hundred voters each, and the 
number of householders in England and Wales (exclusive of Scot- 
land,) who pay all taxes, is 714,911, and of householders who pay 
all taxes, but the house and window taxes, is 284,459, as appears by 
a return made to your honourable House in 1785. 

" In Scotland, the grievance arising from the nature of the rights 
of voting, has a different and still more intolei'able operation. In that 
great and populous division of the kingdom, not only the great 
mass of the householders, but of the landholders also, are excluded 
from all participation in the choice of representatives. 

" Your honourable House knows, that the complicated rights of 
voting, and the shameful practices which disgrace election pro- 
ceedings, have so loaded your table with petitions for judgment and 
redress, that one half of the usual duration of a parliament has 
scarcely been sufficient to settle who is entitled to sit for the other 
half. 

"From the peculiar rights of voting, by which certain places re- 
turn members to serve in parliaments, eighty-four individuals do, 
by their own immediate authority, send one hundred and fifty- 
seven of your honourable members to Parliament, and your peti- 
tioners are ready to name the members and the patrons. 

" Your petitioners are convinced that in addition to the one hundred 
and fifty-seven honourable members above mentioned, one hundred 
and fifty more, making in the whole three hundred and seven, are 
retui'ned to your honourable House, not by the collected voice of 
those whom they appear to represent, but by the recommendation 
of seventy powerful individuals, added to the eighty-four before 
mentioned, and making the total number of patrons altogether only 
one hundred and fifty-four, who return a decided majority of your 
honourable House. 

" Your petitioners inform your honourable House, and are ready 
to prove it at your bar, that they have the most reasonable grounds 
to suspect, that no less than one hundred and fifty of your honourable 



PREFACE. XXXm 

members owe their elections entirely to the interference of peers; 
and your petitioners are prepared to show by legal evidence, that 
forty peers, in defiance of your resolutions, have possessed them- 
selves of so many burghage tenures, and obtained such an absolute 
and uncontrolled command in very many small boroughs in the 
kingdom, as to be enabled by their own positive authority to return 
eighty-one of your honourable members. 

" The means taken by candidates to obtain, and by electors to be- 
stow a seat in your honourable house, appear to have been increas- 
ing in a progressive degree of fraud and corruption. In the 31st 
year of the reign of his present majesty, the number of statutes 
found necessary to prevent bribery, had increased to sixty-five." 

In confirming the allegations and pressing the object of 
the petition, the honourable Mr. Grey said, that " the evils 
of the American war were, in his mind, entirely owing to 
the unequal and corrupt representation in Parliament." 
And Mr. Sheridan made the following observations in the 
course of the debate, to which Mr. Grey's motion gave 
rise. 

" As to the general challenge of proving the abuse which subsists 
in our government, he (Mr. Sheridan) had no delight in it; but as 
he must answer, he should say, that some of the abuses of which he 
complained, and of which a reform of Parliament was the only 
remedy, were, that Peers of the other house sent members to the 
House of Commons by nomination ; that the Crown sent members 
into that house by nomination too ; that some members of that house 
sent in members by their own nomination also — all these things 
made a farce of an election for the places for which these were re- 
turned; that men were created peers without having been of the 
least service to the public in any action of their lives, but merely on 
account of their Parliamentary influence — the present minister had 
been the means of creating a hundred of them. He did not blame 
him, but the fault was in the system of government ; corruption 
was the pivot on which the whole of our public government af- 
fairs turned ; the collection of taxes was under the management 
of wealthy men in Parliamentary interest, the consequence of which 
was, that the collection of them was neglected; that to make up the 
deficiency, excisemen must be added to the excise — this soured 
the temper of the people ; that neither in the church, the army, the 
navy, or any public office, was any appointment given, but through 
Parliamentary influence ; that, in consequence, corrupt majorities 
at the will of the minister.* 

* See the Debate in the 30th vol. of the Parliamentary Ilistorv. 

Vol. I.— E* 



XXXIV TREFACE. 

The following parts of the debate of the House of Com- 
mons respecting the new taxes, which I extract from the 
London Courier of June 19, 1819, will show what degree 
of reformation that body has undergone since Mr. Sheri- 
dan's exposition of its character. 

" The Marquis of Tavistock said, (June 18, 1819.) — Was it not 
grievous to reflect, that, when the minister had proposed an income 
tax, the house defeated his purpose — or, as the noble lord had ex- 
pressed it, relieved themselves, and not the country ? Was it not 
grievous to reflect, that the house had rejected with indignation the 
income tax; and that when other taxes were proposed, which fell 
upon the poor and distressed, they were passed with acclamations, 
and nothing was talked of but the triumphant majorities of minis- 
ters ? (cheering). If any difficulty was felt in believing this to be a 
correct view of the case, let it be recollected, that when the income 
tax was refused in 1816, ministers gave up the malt tax, and the 
noble lord (Castlereagh) said, " Since Parliament has relieved itself 
from the income tax, I and my colleagues relieve the country by 
giving up the malt tax." Why did not ministers, entertaining this 
view of the diff"erent taxes, propose a renewal of the income tax, 
which they believed to be a burden upon the members of the house, 
and not upon the country, instead of the taxes which they had 
admitted to be felt by the country, and especially by the poorer 
classes ? They acted so, obviously because they were afraid of a 
defeat in that house upon the income tax. But would they have 
last year proposed the taxes now required? If they had made the 
proposal, would it have been endured in the last year of the last 
Parliament? Was it surprizing that the people of this country 
should be discontented, when they saw their representatives shelter- 
ing themselves from an income tax? (Hear.) — When they saw 
those representatives at the same time laying further taxes on malt, 
on tea, and on wool ? 

" How happened it, that when the people called loudly and earn- 
estly for retrenchment and economy, the ministers, backed by over- 
whelming majorities, answered them by imposing fresh taxes, and 
increasing their overpowering burdens ? The clear and indisfiuta- 
ble cause ivas^ that the majority of that house were returned by 
borough-mon^ering, a?/d corru/ition, and that the Parliatnents con- 
tinued for seven tjears." 

"Mr. Coke (of Norfolk) said — It was the duty of every man to 
oppose the attempt to arm ministers with new powers of collecting 
money. He was an old member of Parliament, and he had often 
seen and well knew the profligate mode in which the public money 
Mas squandered : he would not trust them with a single farthing, 
y/e would go the full length of asserting that thin was a corrupt 
house^ from which no good could be e.r/iecCed. Ministers had no- 



PREFACE. XXXV 

thing to do but to summon their troops, and they had a majority 
instantly at their command; it is in fact a joke upon the country, 
and the people felt it to be so from one end of the kingdom to the 
other." 

" Mr. Ricardo maintained, at some length, that the idea of there 
being a sinking fund was nothing but a delusion. 

" Before he sat down, he could not help observing, that he con- 
curred in every thing which had been said by the noble marquis, 
regarding the necessity of a reform in the representation of that 
house." 

As Earl Grey has rendered this subject of British re- 
presentation and election of importance to us, I will set it 
in a broader light by additional extracts from the debates 
of the House of Commons, as I find them reported in the 
ministerial newspaper, the London Courier. The speak- 
ers, with the exception of Lord Cochrane, are all mem- 
bers of considerable distinction. 

" Mr. Tierney asked (Feb. 7th, 1817,) if the house recollected the 
number of holders of offices now sitting there. There were not less 
than sixty of these gentlemen, all of whom wer.e liable to be dis- 
missed at pleasure. If they deducted their number from some of 
the ministerial majorities, the result would appear, that the fair and 
free sense of the house was against the measures of ministers. 
Many members, too, were certainly connected by the ties of rela- 
tionship to those who were in power." 

"Mr. Brougham said (June 8th, 1819,) that the whole of that 
which gave the patronage of a borough in the county he had men- 
tioned, which returned two members, and which had never been 
disputed, ivas the gross and wilful abuse of a great charitable estate^ 
i7itended strictly for the education of the fioor." 

"Mr. Brougham said (Feb. 17, 1818,) that in the last year of 
every Parliament, more benefit accrued to the public than during 
all the preceding years of its existence." 

" Mr. Calvert said (Feb. 7th, 1817,) that he was one of six persons 
Avho had sent two members to Parliament, and for which, each mem- 
ber paid 4,500/." 

"Lord Cochrane said (June 20th, 1817,) he remembered very 
well the first time he was returned as a member to the house, which 
was for the borough of Hornton, and on which occasion the town 
bellman was sent through the toAvn to order the voters to come to 
Mr. Townshend's the head man in that place, and a banker, to re- 
ceive the sum of 10/. 10s. This was the truth, and he would ask, 
how could he, in that situation be called a representative of the peo- 
ple in the legitimate constitutional sense of that word ? 

" He had no doubt but there w^ere verv many in that ho\i.se, who 



XXXVl PREFACE. 

had been returned by similar means. His motive, lie was now fully 
convinced, was wrong, decidedly wrong; but as he came home 
pretty well flushed with Spanish money, he had found this borough 
open and he had bargained for it ; and he was sure he would have 
been returned, had he been Lord Camelford's black servant, or his 
great dog." 

" Sir Robert Heron said (May 19th, 1818,) that the necessity of 
reform had often been acknowledged by the house itself. Distin- 
guished members had ofi'ered to prove at the bar its corrupt consti- 
tution, but no strong desire to proceed to those proofs had ever 
been manifested on the part of the house. The corruption was 
manifested by the Grenville act, which declared the house no longer 
fit to be trusted with the decision of its own elections — by the oaths 
and precautions which it declared lo be absolutely necessary to pre- 
vent partial decisions." 

"Mr. Lockart said (March 2d, 1818,) that he approved of the 
general principle of the (election laws amendment) bill, especially 
that part forbidding the distribution of cockades. He had known 
30,000 cockades given away at an election, and this signal of party 
was thus made an engine of bribery, not to the multitude at large, 
but towards persons of particular trades." 

" Mr. Wynn said that, at one election he knew that 8,000/. had 
been given lo special constables. At another election 1,500 special 
constables had been engaged at half a guinea a day each." 

Camelford election. — "Mr. D. W. Harvey observed (July 2d, 
1819,) — the counsel who conducted the case before the committee, 
undertook to prove the existence of a conspiracy for procuring a 
corrupt return for the borough ; and the report of the committee 
showed that that charge had been in a great measure substantiated. 
The facts were — that there were twenty-nine electors for Camelford 
— that that borough had been frequently the subject of sale or bar- 
ter — and that it was now the property of a noble lord, whom he 
would not name, as those who had read the report of the committee 
must know that his lordship's name was no secret. Not long before 
the last election, a meeting of five of the electors was held at an inn 
near the borough, called the AUworthy, which meeting was joined 
by a certain Rexierend Divine^ who expressed to the individuals as- 
sembled a desire to return two members to serve in Parliament for 
the borough of Camelford. To this estimation the electors did not 
object. They annexed only one condition to their compliance with 
it, namely, that a large sum of money should be deposited for cer- 
tain purposes which were mentioned in a whisper. It appeared 
that with that condition the Reverend Divine would not, or could 
not, comply. The five electors, however, did not abandon their de- 
sign. Accordingly they met again at another inn near Camelford, 
called the Five Lanes, where a letter signed James Harvey was 
read, offering 6,000/. for the power of returning two members for 
the borough of Camelford, to be distributed among any fifteen (be- 
ing a majority) of the electors. — This proposal was agreed to. The 
reply of the letter, containing the acquiescence in the proposal, was 



PREFACE. XXXVll 

addressed to Mr. Sibley, the partner of Mr. Hallett. It was proved 
before the committee that Mr. Hallett had held up 6,000/. before 
his partner, Mr. Sibley, and had said — " Sibley, do you think the 
Camelford electors will bite at this ?" As a security for the money, 
it appeared that the half notes of the 6,000A were deposited at 
Camelford. Ultimately, however, the conspiracy failed, and the 
election was lost. It did not appear, however, that the half notes 
had been returned ; for it was proved that Hallet or Sibley had said 
— " What damned rogues those Camelford electors are ! do you 
know I could not get back the half notes from them without making 
some conipwimise !" 

Mr. Southey had informed us, in Espriella's Letters, 
that Englishmen regard all kinds of deceit as lawful 
in electioneering, — that they stop not at asserting the 
grossest and most impudent falsehoods; — that at a JVot- 
tingham election the mob ducked some, and killed others; 
that on such occasions no frauds, pious or impious, are 
scrupled; that any thing like an election, in the plain 
sense of the word, is unknown in England; that a majo- 
rity of the members of the House of Commons are re- 
turned by the most corrupt influence; that seats in that 
house are not uncommonly advertised in the newspapers; 
that, although oaths are required of the voters, they are 
evaded by the grossest means; that votes are publicly 
bought and sold.* 

All this is abundantly illustrated in the history of the 
English elections of the summer of 1818. Much of the 
time of the courts of justice and the House of Com- 
mons, since, has been occupied in the investigation of 
cases of bribery and corruption, involving the most auda- 
cious fraud and perjury. Besides that of Camelford, al- 
ready mentioned, those of Grampound and Barnstaple 
may be cited as edifying specimens. The tactics^i^f the 
boroughs are thus instructively explained, in the number of 
Bell's Veekly Messenger, of the 29th June, 1818. 

" Among the various scenes now exhibiting in the progress of 
the business of the general election, there are one or two to be seen 
in some of the boroughs which deserve not only to be generally 

* See Letter xlviii. 



XXXVIU PREFACE. 

known, but which we should hope will not be soon forgotten. We 
deem it a duty to call particular attention to one of these elective 
bodies. Upon the arrival of their late member to repeat his canvass, 
he was met by the electors in a body, and the first question put to 
him was, whether he was willing to pay the usual gratuity of 40^. 
per man ? — that is to say, to invite them all to a breakfast, where 
each should find a 401. bank of England note under his saucer. 
The gentleman replied that he was really not rich enough to give 
this expensive breakfast to three hundred voters ; but that he had 
rendered the borough such important services in their trade, roads, 
and harbour, that he trusted their gratitude would rmt seize the 
present occasion of turning him out; but if they insisted on the 
401. per man, they must seek for some one who was better able to 
buy them at that price." 

"In another borough, the practice of the election we understand 
to be as follows: — The price of the worthy and independent elec- 
tors is 50/. per head, and one of the principal men in the town being 
a banker, the money is to be paid in his notes, and at his bank. 
Upon the day preceding the nomination and return, the town crier 
gives public notice for all the electors to appear personally at the 

banking house of Mr. , to consult upon a suitable member 

for their independent borough. Each appears accordingly, and re- 
ceives his fifty pounds. On the following day, the banker appears 
at the hustings or town hall, recommends very warmly Mr. such a 
one, and the electors immediately elect him. No questions are 
asked as to the fifty pounds, or from whom it came, and no one of 
course takes any blame to himself for having received a bribe from 
the worthy Mr. such a one. Each is willing to swear that he never 
saw his money. The vote is given only from good will to the banker, 
and it seems that the oath does not apply to gratuities from third 
persons." 

" In a third borough, the money is given by the 'man in the 
moon,' who deputes an attorney for his agent. In a few days the 
same attorney produces a notice from the same man in the moon, 
that he could wish their respected and most independent borough to 
be represented by Mr. A. and Mr. B. two gentlemen with whose 
worth he is acquainted. The recommendation is adopted as a mat- 
ter of course, and two persons as fitted for corruption as themselves 
are sent into Parliament. In a word, there is scarcely a slang term 
or a slang practice, which may not be found in the abominable prac- 
tices of some of these boroughs, in which perjury is made a comedy, 
and the most atrocious roguery converted into a jolly pleasantry. 
All these things are going on before our eyes." 

In scenes of disorder and violence, the late election 
was as rich as any former occasion of the kind. The 
treatment of Sir Murray Maxwell is not unknown to us 
on this side of the Atlantic. Such horrible outrage as 



PREFACE. XXXIX 

was practised in Westminster by the mob, and such ri- 
baldry as was exchanged on the hustings by the rival 
candidates, " men of rank and fashion,^' might procure 
from those who write, within the Westminster uproar, 
some toleration for the occasional animation of our voters, 
and the rough declamation of our stump orators in the 
electioneering contests of the southern states. 

The condition of things, in Ireland, with regard to the 
choice of legislators, is truly melancholy, as it is described 
in a late book of travels, possessing the highest autho- 
rity.* "So far," says the author, "are the wretched 
tenants of the cabins from receiving benefit for their in- 
apposite distinction of freeholders, that it operates a con- 
trary way, and puts them to expense and loss of time, 
without the privilege of having any choice. Ruin would 
inevitably overtake him who should dare to presume to 
have any opinion but that dictated to him by his landlord; 
and the candidate who should solicit, or accept without 
solicitation, the vote of a tenant, against the will of his 
landlord, must answer the irregularity with his life, and 
incur the general odium of his own class of society. Po- 
pular opinion has little or no injluence in the election of 
the one hundred Msh niembeis. Election contests with us 
procure, for a time, some consideration for the lower 
ranks — what dignifies the English character debases the 
Irish. The magnitude of the evil is greater than can be 
conceived by those who have not had an opportunity of 
witnessing its effects. In the most venal places in Eng- 
land, besides the bribe, some condescension is expected: 
here the poor voter is only degraded by an additional link 
to the chain of his dependency. The representaticin of 
the town rests mostly in each body corporate, which sel- 
dom exceeds twelve members. The selecting for repre- 
sentation by the extent of the population was a farce, in 
which the people had no assigned part to act. The de- 
mocratic part of the British constitution, quoad the Irish, 
had better not exist." 



* Observations on tlie Slate of Ireland, written in a tour tliroiigh that coun- 
try, by J. C. Curwen, Esq. M. P. London. 1818. Vol, U. Lelter'li. 



Xl PREFACE. 

" In some instances, the very favours granted the Ca- 
tholics are considered as sources of aggravation, if not of 
insult — emblazoned badges of slavery! In conferring the 
elective franchise, they have been denied the exercise of 
a free choice, the proudest prerogative of Englishmen; 
and compelled to feel, in the discharge of the granted 
privilege, their own inferiority." 

4. It is not in newspapers, reviews, and parliamentary 
speeches alone, that the United States are traduced in 
England. Her writers of formal treatises on subjects 
connected with general literature, and even with natural 
science, fall into preposterous digressions about the un- 
worthiness of their " American kinsmen," and are not al- 
ways inordinately scrupulous as to the accuracy of their 
disparaging statements. I have an instance at hand in 
the following passage of a late work, entitled "The 
History and Practice of Vaccination, by James Moore, 
Director of the National Vaccine Establishment at Lon- 
don, Member of the Royal College of Surgery, &.c." 

"The freedom that reigns in the United States of America, is 
incompatible with unanimity; consequently, the vaccine had to 
struggle there with a long and violent opposition, which was not 
much allayed by the exertions of the President, Mr. Jefferson, who 
patronized the new practice; yet by degrees it spread and was in- 
troduced even among the Indian tribes. It was in the year 1799, 
that this important benefit was conveyed to the United States from 
Great Britain. Indeed, except the produce of the soil, what that is 
valuable has not that nation received from us? Certainly their arts, 
literature, laws, and religion, the model of their political establish- 
ments, and even their love of liberty. — Yet when Great Britain was 
hard pressed by Napoleon, the United States submitted to the 
threats and depredations of the tyrant. Sec. But let England forget 
this ^|ji rejoice in being able to add the vaccine to the other bene- 
fits cOTferred on the Americans. And may our physicians continue 
to instruct them to cure and prevent the diseases of their country; 
may our poets soften and delight them; and above all, may our 
philosophers improve their dispositions, and perhaps, in a future 
age, their animosity will cease, and there will spring up in that 
country some filial gratitude!"* 



C. 12. 



PREFACE. Xli 

All this objurgation in a history of the vaccine! The 
absurdity and malice of deviating into such topics on 
such an occasion, would be manifest, though the princi- 
pal accusation should be acknowledged to be sustainable. 
But what are we to think of the member of the Royal 
College of Surgeons, when we reflect that it is unjust; 
that he must have known it to be so; and that it mriy be 
retorted upon England with tenfold force? There, had 
the vaccine to struggle with a longer and more violent op- 
position, than in any other of the countries into which it 
has been introduced. No heavier disgrace was ever 
brought upon the medical faculty, or the human mind in 
civilized life, than by the prejudices with which it was 
encountered among a part of the British population, and 
the pamphlets sent forth against it from the British press, 
in the names of London physicians eminent in their pro- 
fession. The opposition to it amounted to phrenzy, even 
in such quarters; and in the protracted controversy, the 
foulest scurrility was mixed with the wildest laving. I 
need but mention Dr. Moseley's Essay on the Lues Bo- 
villa, and the publications of Doctors Rowley, Squirril, 
Birch, Lipscomb, &c. 

In the very book of th^ director, we have all the evi- 
dence we could desire against Great Britain on this 
head; and in the voluminous publication of Dr. Ring,* 
there is still more. I refer to this work particularly, 
because it was well known to our faithful historian, who 
read in it the reverse of what he has alleged against 
America. Dr. Waterhouse of Boston, acknowledges, in- 
deed, in one of his essays, which Dr. Ring has quoted, 
that some incredulity was displayed, and some ridi- 
cule indulged, in New England, at the first annunciation 
of the discovery; but Dr. Ring furnishes the testimony of 
the same physician, and others of the faculty in the Uni- 
ted States, to show with what rapidity it conciliated even 



* Treatise on the Covv-Pox, containing the histor}' of Vaccine Inoculation, by 
John Ring, Member of the Roval Colleg'e of Surgeons in London. Part 2d, 
1803. 

Vol. I.— F* 



Xlii PREFACE. 

the warmest zeal in its favour, and was carried into 
general operation. One of Dr. Waterhouse's statements to 
him, of 1801, says — "The arguments thrown out in 
England against this noble discovery and its application, 
are detailed here (in Boston,) but a great majority believe 
and will be saved." Ring writes thus himself — " Some 
unlucky cases, it seems, have damped the ardour of a 
people (the Americans,) who received the new inocula- 
tion with a candour, a liberality, and even generosity 
much to their credit." He recites the cases and adds, 
" This was enough to damp the ardour of any nation.^' 
A few pages onward, he mentions its signal progress 
throughout the United States; compliments the American 
government for communicating it so promptly to the In- 
dian tribes; and subjoins the following remarks: "In 
England the public opinion is, at the time of my writing 
this (1803, Jim years after Jenner's promulgation of the 
discovery!) rather wavering. Falsehoods propagated by 
the most base and despicable characters, have been too 
successsful."* 

It occurred to me to place the extract from surgeon 
Moore's work, under the eye of Dr. Redman Coxe, the 
present learned professor of Materia Medica in the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania; so honourably and deservedly 
mentioned in Dr. Ring's work as the physician to whom 
Pennsylvania is primarily indebted for the benefit of vac- 
cination. Dr. Coxe has had the goodness to put into my 
hands a small paper of notes, which I copy as decisive 
testimony on the subject, since his knowledge of the pro- 
gress and establishment of the discovery in the United 
States, is more direct and minute, than that of any other 
person. 

" I am confident I am correct in asserting, that no novelty of 
equal importance to mankind, was ever received in any country, 
with more i^apidity — more unanimity, or more extensively. It is 
true, the same cautious spirit which ought invariably to govern us 
in concerns of this nature, led many medical men (not to oppose 

* P. 760, The controversy raged with unabated violence as late as 1806 — 7. 



PREFACE. Xliii 

Us progress, but) merely to await the result of experiments, in or- 
der to determine their judgments. What opposition has this Jen- 
nerian blessing ever met with in this country, that equals even a 
tenth part of that which it received in Great Britain? Let Mr. Ring's 
elaborate production on the subject of vaccination clear us from the 
reproach thrown on us. — In that work, his pen has unfolded the 
opposition it encountered from almost every quarter of the United 
Kingdoms of Great Britain; an opposition, the effects of which have 
scarcely yet subsided there; whilst here, for many years, even a 
whisper against it has not been raised. — Were it necessary, I could 
give you perhaps one hundred letters from medical men in all parts 
of America, received within twelve months after I had introduced 
it here, earnestly applying for the infection, and requesting infor- 
mation respecting the disease. I saw, in fact, nothing like opposi- 
tion; — I read of none in our medical journals. An uniform desire 
was every where evinced to spread the benefit as speedily as possi- 
ble. A few miserable quacks alone, who depended on the small- 
pox for their daily bread, protested against it — and even of those, 
the greater part soon were obliged to yield to the popular opinion 
in its favour. 

" Such are the facts which stifle the inconsiderate assertion of 
Mr. Moore — I need scarcely add to the number; which if neces- 
sary, I could easily do. The disease had fully established its repu- 
tation in America within two years from its first introduction here; 
and long before its claims were admitted freely in Great Britain." 

There are some points at least, as to which " the free- 
dom that reigns in the United States of America/' would 
not seem to be incompatible with unanimity. If the whole 
population of those states were canvassed, perhaps not 
one mdividual would be found disaffected to the form and 
constitution of their government. The number malecon- 
tent with the system of administration, or distrustful of 
the ability and integrity of the present executive councils, 
is certainly so small as to disappear on a glance at the 
mass of citizens in the opposite temper of mind. Firmis- 

SIMUM IMPERIUM QUO OBEDIENTES GAUDENT. 

How far has the freedom which reigns in Great Bri- 
tain proved effectual to create unanimity as to her political 
institutions, and the composition and course of her national 
councils? Is not the monarchy itself odious to a multi- 
tude of her subjects .'^ The mechanism of her legislature 
and cabinet, and the system of administration are matters 
of disgust and outcry through every rank and class of her 



Xliv PREFACE. 

inhabitants. From the highest quarters we are informed- 
and, indeed, the fact cannot fail to be perceived, even at a 
distance, that the great majority of the British people 
have not the least conlidence in the patriotism and disin- 
terestedness of any of the parties in Parliament, or of the 
men in place; all are believed to aim only at the possession 
of power and pationage. Among the lower orders, sedi- 
tion is declared to have a permanent abode, and to prowl 
without intermission. " There prevails," said Mr. Lamb, 
in the House of Commons (March 11, 1818,) '^ though 
to what extent I will not pretend accurately to define, in 
all the manufacturing districts, a spirit always active, inve- 
terate, and implacable: not exasperated by suffering; not 
soothed by prosperity; not allayed by time; a spirit ever 
laying in wait, and in ambush, to take advantage of the 
disasters of the country." 

We ^ee fully verified at this moment, the creed of this 
member of Parliament, a whig leader: the habitual leven 
of insurrection only becomes the more active and expan- 
sive, as the rate of wages or the supply of food declines. 
It places the British government, in the season of ferment^ 
as at present, under the horrible necessity of shedding, 
with the apparatus of war, the blood of the guiltless, per- 
haps loyal peasant, whom the want of occupation draws to 
the convention of starving manufacturers, and hairbrain- 
ed, or counterfeit demagogues.* It leads — I cannot say 
obliges — that government, to resort to one of the most 
hateful of the devices of timorous despotism — the employ- 
ment of spies and informers, who cannot execute their 
office, without, to a certain degree, studiously exasperating 
the discontents, and encouraging the delusions, against 
which it is the alleged object of their mission to guard. 
It does more: it throws the constitution off its poise; it 
creates a potential dictatorship in the ministry, who either 
do feel, or profess to feel themselves bound to consult the 



* See the history of the Manchester meeting-, of August, 1816, at which 
women and girls were cut and trampled down by corps of dragoons, and left 
mangled and weltering, to be conveyed in carts to the hospitals. 



PREFACE. xIV 

tranquillity of the state, or of particular parts of the king- 
dom, at the expense of the established forms and rules of 
law; counting upon what they are always sure to procure, 
indemnity by vote of Parliament. — What is there in the 
American republic comparable to this state of things.'^ 

This want of unanimity, this propensity to rebellious 
violence, among the lower orders, has placed the Biitish 
rulers under another embarrassment, the most awful that 
can be imagined, and far outweighing any evil in our si- 
tuation, produced or threatened by our negro slavery. 

According to the best authorities, the system of the 
poor rates in England, is proceeding to take the whole 
produce of the land from the owner, with very little bene- 
fit to the poor. It already " amounts, with the land tax 
and tythes, in many parishes, to a disherison of the pro- 
perty of the landholder/"* It "falls exclusively on lands 
and houses, the dividends (exceeding twenty-seven millions 
sterling) upon the unredeemed national debt, of eight 
hundred millions sterling, being wholly exempt.^'! Its 
operation is most oppressively partial, independently of 
this last circumstance, so unjust and invidious. It forms 
a tax thus characterized, which, according to some, must 
amount for the year 1818, to ten millions sterling,| per- 
haps to twelve; and this product is chiefly consumed in 
rearing the offspring of improvidence and vice. It is fast 
multiplying the already immense number of paupers, and 
widening the acknowledged degeneracy of the labouring 
classes.§ It exhibits, in short, to use the language of 
Colquhoun, one ninth part of a numerous nation existing 
as paupers, vagabonds, idlers, and criminal offenders, at 
the expense of one third of the remaining population."^ 
In the year 1812, the number of paupers who received 
parish relief, besides vagrants, was 1,208,125, out of a po- 

* Report on the Poor Laws, from the Committee of the House of Commons, 
1817. Appendix. 

f Observations on the Poor Laws. By J. Lord Sheffield. London, 1818, 

+ Lord Sheffield 

§ See Note X. at the end of this volume. 

tl Treatise on Indigence. P. 262. 



Xlvi PREFACE. 

pulation of 10,653,000.* The proportion of really im- 
potent paupers in the number just stated, was but one 
seventh, according to the ratio officially returned for 1804. 
"It will be found, on investigation," says Colquhoun, 
that, of a million and a half of paupers with their families, 
now living chiefly on the labour of others, considerably 
more than half a million are in the vigour of life, and 
whose labour, if well directed, ought to produce at least 
ten millions sterling beyond their present earnings; which 
sum is totally lost to the community, in addition to what 
is expended in affording them a feeble and scanty subsist- 
ence."! Since the termination of the last war, this 
wretched and noxious class of persons has been progres- 
sively increasing in number, and deteriorating in charac- 
ter. 

The only true remedy for this manifold, portentous 
evil, is the abolition or great reduction of the poor rates. 
But the government, though it has before it the alterna- 
tive of ultimate ruin to the country, dares not go beyond 
palliatives.J Near a milHon of sturdy beggars could not 



* Clarkson's Enquiry on Pauperism. London, 1816. 

■\ Treatise on the Wealth, Power, and Kesources of the British Empire. 
London, 1814. 

\ The late act of Parliament, (59 G. HI. 1819,) " to amend the laws for the 
relief of the poor," aims only at mitigating, not eradicating, tlie evil. Very 
little confidence seemed to be entertained by Parliament, in its efficacy for any 
purpose. Mr. S. Bourne, the member most active on this question, had unsuc- 
cessfully proposed a bill, respecting the faihire of wliich 1 find the following 
remarkable observations in Bell's Weekly Messenger of 17th May, 1819. 

"The two great interests of the country, the agricultural and the manufac- 
turing interests, are here in direct conflict. The complaint of the landed in- 
terest is, that they have to pay the poor-rates for the manufacturing labourers : 
That the mnnufacturers not only employ and wear out the men, but, as it were, 
produce and call into existence a mendicant population ; and, after they have 
had the best days of the labourer, and encouraged him to marry and rear u 
large family, they return him unto the parish from whence they first took him 

"The object of this bill was, that all who resided three years in any parish, 
should be settled in such parish, or, in other words, (for such was its purpose as 
well as its effect,) that tlie manufacturing towns and districts should support 
their own old and sick poor. Accordingly, all the manufacturing districts have, 
to a man, united in opposition against it, and, by a private address to evQry 
member of parliament singly, have actually succeeded in throwing it out, and 
this in a House of Commons, the majority of which is necessarily of the landed 
interest. We must confess that this issue of the bill has very much surprised 
us, and, we believe, neither Mr. Bourne himself, nor any of the committee, 
expected this event. The bill, however, is lost for the present session." 



PREFACE. Xlvii 

be starved with impunity; they would be provoked by ab- 
solute deprivation to persevering violence; such a nucleus 
for riot and rebellion, is not to be set in motion, to gather 
actively what no array of the military might be sufficient 
to crush, without extensive desolation. Colonization is 
now attempted as a means of relief; and the Cape of 
Good Hope is chosen as the theatre, in order that a dou- 
ble purpose may be answered: but this expedient, if any 
number of the vampyres can be drawn off, will be like 
tapping for a radical dropsy. The poor rates will conti- 
nue, with the taxes* and the tythes, generating pauper- 

* " It was acknowledged," said Lord Ebrington, in the House of Commons, 
(April 28th, 1819,) " tliat a labourer, whose income did not exceed 18/. a year, 
paid 27s. a year duty on the salt he consumed." Dr. Phillimore, in the course 
of his speech of the same date, respecting the salt duties, made this statement. 
" The bushel of salt is taxed at forty times its value, and the tax falls upon all 
the necessaries of tlie poor. No ta.x operates more on their morals ; and it had 
been found, that wherever it prevailed, it was the sure forerunner of crime. 
It was distinctly stated in an address of the grand jury for the county of Ches- 
ter, that the profit derived from selling untaxed salt was so great, and operated 
so powerfully, as to taint the morals of that part of the community. The evi- 
dence before the committee, derived from various sources, all tended to esta- 
blish the same conclusion. The temptation to steal, .ind conceal what was 
stolen, was such as to cause the practice too generally to prevail." 

The following quotations from the debates of Parliament will illustrate the 
operation of another single tax, upon tiie lower orders. 

" Mr. Gratlan said, as to the dangerous prevalence of the fever in Ireland 
being in part attributable to the confined air of the abodes of the poor, there 
could be no stronger proof than tlie relaxation granted by government, enabling 
the parties deprived of .adequate ventillation, to open their windows without 
being liable to the window tax." 

"If a single individual," said the Marquis of Dounshire (House of Lords, 
March, 1819,) "lived in a house, it became liable to the window tax; and owners 
tlierefore, in Ireland, crowded great numbers into one, and shut up others, to 
avoid paying the taxes." 

" Sir John Newport said, (May 13th, 1818,) he wished to inform the house, 
that in comparing the accounts of 1814 and 1818, it was found that no less than 
one-tenth of the windows of the kingdom of Ireland, within that period, had 
been closed up to avoid the tax, and he should appeal to the house whether such 
a circumstance was not calculated to have a most injurious effect, particularly 
on the poorer classes, by depriving them of air and Ifight. Taxation in Ireland 
had, within a short period, increased with a rapidity which was grievously felt." 

"Mr. Ilobert Shaw asked, (April 21st, 1818,) are gentlemen aware, that un- 
der the present act (for taxing windows,) the collectors can demand an entrance 
into every room in every house in Ireland, from eight in the morning until sun- 
set, and insist upon admission, under a penalty of 20/.? 

"Mr. Shaw stated, (May 6th, 1819,) that in the part of 'Dublin called the 
liberties, the houses were large enough to be subject to the window tax, and 
were inhabited by the poor and miserable. The government had felt that so 
deeply, that it had announced, that wherever windows had been ocened to fnci- 



Xlviii PREFACE. 

ism; and, above all, the exorbitant system of manufactures, 
which perpetually throws back upon the agricultural dis- 
tricts, as mendicants and desperadoes, those labourers 
whom it received from them originally, in that happier 
condition of body and mind, which is the regular effect 
of agricultural life. It is this operation, resulting from 
the English law of settlement as to paupers, along with 
other adventitious causes,* which makes the returns of 
mendicity and criminality from some of the agricultural 
counties of England, larger than those from the manufac-: 
turing districts, and thus libels, as it were, that state and 
occupation most favourable to the moral and physical 
welfare of our species. 

To revert to Surgeon Moore. His suggestion about 
filial gratitude will be found fully answered in the body 
of this volume, as well as the chiding remark of the 
Q,uarterly Review, in the article on Fearon's Travels — 
that " the American colonists grew up in prosperity, 
maintained and /bsferec? by a liberal parent, who saw, with 
heartfelt satisfaction, her offspring increase in strength 
and stature, and advance with firm and rapid steps to- 
wards maturity." I rely upon the facts and statements 
which 1 adduce in my first sections, as sufficient to dis- 
pel this hallucination of the reviewers. 

The other topic upon which the surgeon has touched, 
— the animosity of the Americans against Great Britain, 
which her philosophers are to correct, in lapse of time, by 
improving our dispositions, is a favourite one with the 
travellers and reviewers, and is treated by them with the 
more emphasis, because it serves to promote their main 



litate the circulation of air and prevent infection, the tas would be remitted. It 
vvoiikl no doubt be urged that but few had availed themselves of this offer; but 
that was because they had unfortunately too little confidence in the veracity of 
government. They did not possess besides the means of openinj^ tlv'se windows. 
This was proved by the report of Dr. Parker in 1807 and 1812, ai d ronhrmed 
by the numiier of windows closed, according to the notices given. Those no- 
tices amounted for the last three vears to thirty -two thousand, four hundred and 
twenty-four, of wliich .'3,501 came from Dublin alone, and it might be inferred 
that the distress was gi-eat which v\ould thus drive men to deny themselves the 
light of Heaven and a free circulation of air." 

* See Colquhoun's Treatise on Indigence, p. 273, 4. and Treatise on the He- 
sources of the British Empire, p. 12. 



PREFACE. Xlix 

object of raising aversion and distrust in the breasts of 
their countrymen. 

On this score, as well as every other, great injustice is 
done to the Americans. No small number of them are 
entitled to consider the imputation as a sort of ingratitude 
on the part of a Briton. I will venture to assert that in 
no nation, foreign to Great Britain, had she, until the se- 
cond year of our last war, so many warm, firm friends, 
and blind admirers, as in the American. A great party, 
the Federalists, forming a decided majority in seven or 
eight states, numerous in most of the others, and having 
a full proportion of the desert, intelligence, and wealth of 
the country, were contradistinguished by their veneration 
for her character, and the deep, affectionate interest which 
they took in her prosperity. They exulted in her successes 
over France, even at the time when she was waging war 
upon their own firesides. This was not merely because 
they detested and dreaded the ascendancy of the French 
military despotism, but because much of the old positive 
kindness and reverence towards her remained. She might 
have revived it entirely by a course of generosity and 
justice; by teaching her philosophers to attempt the "im- 
provement of our dispositions,'^ and her politicians to 
regulate their language and conduct, upon a different sys- 
tem from that which they have pursued. 

Habitual ejaculations of contempt and ill-nature, join- 
ed to a new state of things, have a sure tendency to 
produce total alienation. The new state of things to 
which I allude consists in the prostration of the Gorgon in 
France, by which so many of us were petrified: the con- 
sequent restoration of our powers of vision and reflection, 
in regard to its colossal antagonist; and the remission of 
those intestine heats which, having their origin, in part, 
in an inordinate preference of the cause of one or the 
other European belligerent, conduced in turn to aggra- 
vate that preference. The Anglo-mania has, I believe, 
almost universally subsided; but, notwithstanding the stu- 
died contumelies and injuries to which no American can 
be insensible, it has not yet been replaced in the same 

Vol. I.— G* 



1 PREFACE. 

breasts by sentiments of hostility. We lament that peril- 
ous crisis at which England has arrived; when, with a 
crushing apparatus of government, a most distorted and 
distempered state of society, no reform can be admitted, 
lest it should run, by its own momentum, to extremes, and 
produce general confusion; when her statesmen, over- 
powered by the very aspect of so much morbidness and 
obliquity, are compelled to exclaim, JVec vitia, nee reme- 
dia pati possumtis. We cherish and esteem the English 
individuals whom we possess, and, without coveting the 
presence of more, we are ready to entertain the same 
feelings, to practise all the charities, towards those who 
may come among us at any time, provided it be not for 
the purpose of holding us up to the scorn and derision of 
the world. 



CONTENTS. 



SECTION I. 

PouTiCAL and Mercantile Jealousy of Great Britain. Peculiar fate of the North 
American Colonies in being' constantly defamed by the mother country. 
Her early jealousy and selfish alarms. Testimony of Evelyn, Hume, Pos- 
tlethwayi. Child, Gee, &c. Measures to prevent the growth of American 
manufactures. Illiberal colonial policy. Testimony of Adam Smith, of 
Dummer, &c. Scheme of confining the North American settlements to 
the sea-coast. Early panic about emigration ; attempts to repress it, &c. 

SECTION II. 

General Character and Merits of the Colonists. English testimony in their favour. 
Quarterly Review; Burke; Chalmers, &c. Character of the first settlers 
in New England; in Virginia; and the other provinces. Their respecta- 
ble rank in life ; their love of liberty and independence ; the excellence 
of their institutions ; no obligations to the mother country on this score. 
Charters how obtained. Uniform endeavours of the mother country to 
destroy the Charters. System of religious freedom and equality esta- 
blished by the Colonists ; disturbed, and, in some instances, subverted, by 
the mother country. Religious intolerance of Massachusetts extenuated. 
Political intrepidity of the Colonists ; leading traits of it in their history. 
Their domestic morals and habits ; religious spirit. Their attention to the 
object of general education. Their moderation and beneficence towards 
the aborigines. Their physical economy and prosperity. 

SECTION III. 

Difficulties surmounted by the Colonists. The conquest of the wilderness. 
Oppressive administration of the mother country. Absence of all external 
aid. Struggle with the Indians; with the French of Canada. Accusations 
of the mother country, as to the treatment of the Indians, retorted. Case 
of the Acadiansin 1755; barbarous conduct of Great Britain towards them. 
Wars which she made in America, exclusively her own, and not induced by 
the interest of the colonies. 

SECTION IV. 

Great exertions and sacrifices of the colonies in the wars of Great Britain, be- 
tween the years 1680 and 1763. Expeditions of Ni-w England and New 
York against Canada. Hostilities with the Indians in New England and the 
Carolinas. Provincial expeditions against the Spaniards in Florida. Injus- 
tice of the mother country. Reduction of the fortress of Louisbom-g by the 
Provincial troops. Ungrateful return of the mother country. Braddock'a 
affair. Colonel Johnson's victory over the French. War of 1756. Mis- 



lii CONTENTS, 

raanageinenl and imbecilily of the British generals. Acliievements of the 
Provincials. Aspersions cast upon them. Insensibility of the mother coun- 
try to their merits. Confirmation of the contents of this Section by British 
testimony. 

SECTION V. 

Commercial obligations of Great Britain to the Colonies. Acknowledgments of 
her political writers Amount of the colonial trade at difterent epochs. 
Details of its nature and productiveness. Lord Sheflield ; Mr. Glover ; 
Anderson; Ciiatham ; Mr. Burke; Champion. Consumption of British 
manufactures by the colonies. Good faith of the American merchants. 
Rigour of the British monopoly. Disadvantages suffered by the Colonies. 
Benefits reaped by Great Britain from her commercial intercourse with the 
United States of America. 

SECTION VI. 

Afl'ectionate loyalty of the Colonists at the peace of 1763. No designs of in- 
dependence. Refutation of Chalmers and Uoberison on this head. Dis- 
trust and despotic aims of the mother country. Her ingratitude and harsh- 
ness. Stamp Act, and its train of outrages and contumelies. Applause 
bestowed upon the resistance of the colonies by Chatham and Camden. 
Character of the British councils. Their ignorance concerning America. 
Etdiglitencd discourse of Glover False ideas entertained of America. 
Overweening confidence of the British ministry and nation. Abuse of the 
colonies. Colonel Grant, Earl of Sandwich, &c. Ferocity of the hostili- 
ties waged by the mother country. Her acrimony of feeling and expres- 
sion. Her temper of mind at and after the conclusion of peace. Illusions 
in whirh she indulged. Oracles of Lord Sheffield. Contrast between 
her dispositions and those of the L^nited States. Her unremitted enmity 
and jealousy. Evidences. Disappointment of her hopes. 

SECTION VH. 

Titles of the United States to the respect and good will of Great Britain. Ani- 
mosity and arrogance of the British periodical writers. Edinburgh Re- 
view — its system of derision and obloquy. How distinguished from the 
Quarterly Review in this respect. Instances of its malevolence and incon- 
sistency. Article on Davis's Travels ; Transactions of the American Phi- 
losophical Society ; Letters on Silesia of John Quincy Adams ; Life of 
Washington, by Chief Justice Marshall ;• Aslie's Travels; Columbiad of 
Barlow, &c. Sneers and Calumnies. Exposition of some of the contra- 
dictions abounding in tlie Edinburgh Review. Reprisals upon Great Bri- 
tain. 

SECTION VIII. 

The Quarterly Review. Its implacable enmity ; false logic ; unworthy pro- 
ceeding ; invectives and misrepresentations. Articles on American works : 
— Inchiquin's View of the United States — Lewis and Clarke's Expedition — 
Life of Fulton, by Cadwallader Colden, Esq. This work defended against 
the Quarterly Review. Question of Steam Navigation. Fulton's merits 
asserted. Controversy respecting the invention of the Quadraiit, called 
Hadley's. The claims of Godfrey maintained. Original evidence. James 
Logan. Contradictions, as to England, detected in the Quarterly Review. 
British Critic : London Critical Journal ; their ribaldry. E.\amination and 
Refutation of the ch.irge against America, of having declared herself, in 
Congress, "the freest and most enlightened nation of the earth." Speech 
of Fisher Ames. Defence of the American Congress from other charges. 
Retort upon the British Parliament. 



CONTENTS. liii 



SECTION IX. 

Accnsations of the Edinburgh Review respecting the existence of negro slavery 
in llie United States. Early upbraidings of England on the same head. 
Her share in the establishment of that evil. Early denunciations of it by 
the colonists. Their repeated attempts to arrest the introduction of ne- 
groes. Inflexibility of the mother country. American abolition of the 
slave trade. Measures of the State Legislatures and of Congress on this 
subject. United States have the merit of priority. Historical deduction 
of tlie British slave trade. Its extent and criminality. Developments. His- 
tory of the British abolition of the slave trade. Its interested and imper- 
fect character. Selfish aims of the British government. Supineness of the 
ministry until the approach of the peace of 1814. Concession of the slave 
trade to Spain, Portugal, and France. Fatal consequences. British capital 
largely engaged in the illicit trade. Negociations at the Congress of Vi- 
enna. Insidious propositions of Lord Castlereagh. Miscarriage. British 
West Indies adequately suppHed with negroes since the British abolition. 
West India slavery ; its character ; in no degree mitigated. Renewed ne- 
gotiations with foreign powers. Their well founded distrust of the views of 
Great Britain in relation to the general abolition of the slave trade. De- 
velopment of those views. Frustration of her scheme of establishing a 
right of search in time of peace. Hypocrisy and imposture. Present state 
of the slave trade. Vindication of the United States, as regards the exist- 
ence of slavery within their bosom. What they have separately efl'ected 
in the way of abolition. Colonization, Character and condition of the 
American negroes, free and enslaved. Character and deportment of the 
American masters. Denial of the allegations of the British travellers. 
State of the British Poor. 

SUBJECTS OF THE NOTES. 

Indian Warfare. Locke's Constitutions for Carolina. Religious toleration of 
Rhode Island. Maroon War in Jamaica. Petition of the Acadians to the 
King of Great Britain. Reduction of Louisbourg. Braddock's papers. 
Loudon's campaigns. Franklin's refutation of the British calumnies of 
1759. Character of the Royal Governors of the Colonies Credulity of 
the British Cabinet of 1776 — 8 — 9. Debates in Parliament on American 
cowardice. Utility of the North American colonies as an asylum for Bri- 
tish subjects. The American Philosophical Society. Marshall's Life of 
Washington. State of society in Great Britain as to the vices of intoxica- 
tion and gambling; cruelty to animals; brutal sports and conflicts, &c. Dr. 
Colden. Steam Boat navigation. James Logan. Position of the English 
and Irish Roman Catholics. Kidnapping in Great Britain and the United 
States. British Poor, and Poor Laws. Esl.iblislied Church in England. 
British prisons; criminal calendar; administration of penal justice, finan- 
cial affairs, &c. 



MEMENTOS. 

"Let us read, and recollect, and impress upon our souls, the views and 
ends of our own more immediate forefathers, in exchanging their native 
country for a dreary, inhospitable wilderness. Let us examine into the 
nature of that power, and the cruelty of that oppression, which drove 
them from their homes. Recollect their amazing fortitude, their bitter 
sufferings ! the hunger, the nakedness, the cold, which they patiently 
endured ! the severe labours of clearing their grounds, building their 
houses, raising their provisions, amidst dangers from wild beasts and 
savage men, before they had time, or money, or materials for commerce ! 
Recollect the civil and religious principles, and hopes, and expectations, 
which constantly supported and carried them through all hardships, 
with patience and resignation !" 

Essay on the Canon and Feudal Law, by John Adams, Esq. 1765. 

"If we do not, my lords, get the belter of America, America will 
get the better of us. We do not fear, at present, that they will attack 
us at home ; but consider, on the other hand, what will be the fate of 
the sugar islands, what will be the fate of our trade to that country. 
That, my lords, is a most valuable, important consideration ; it is the 
best feather in our wing. The people of America are preparing to 
raise a navy ; they have begun in part ; trade will beget opulence, and 
by that means they will be enabled to hire ships from foreign powers." 

Lord JMansfield, House of Lords, 1775. 

"It hurts me to hear a proposition urged in this house, so destruc- 
tive to the welfare of Britain, as American independence. Would not 
the independency of America be the eve of their advancement into a 
fourishing naval power? Tlieir situation commanding a species of supe- 
riority over all the earth, they would soon rival Europe in arts, as well 
as grandeur, and their power in particular would rear itself on the 
decay of ours. Are we, then, so lost to all the feelings of patriotism, 
that, with a wanton hand, we would lay the foundation stone of a block- 
ade against our own existence i" 

Mr. Pulteney, House of Commons, 1777. 

" We have heard, indeed, the prosperity of America declared, by 
Lord Sidraouth, when he was minister of stale, to be an awful warning 
to Great Britain, never hereafter to colonize a new country. Merciful 
Heaven ! that the brethren of our ancestors should have founded a 
mighty empire, indefinite in its increase— an empire, which retains, and 
is spreading, all that constitutes " country" in a wise man's feelings, 
viz. the same laws, the same customs, the same religion, and, above all, 
the same language ; that, in short, to have been the mother of a pros- 
perous empire, is to be a -uiarning to Great Britain ! And whence this 
dread .'' Because, forsooth, our eldest born, when of age, had set up 
for himself; and not only preserving, but, in an almost incalculable 



Ivi MEMENTOS. 

proportion, increasing the advantages of former reciprocal intercourse, 
had saved us the expense and anxiety of defending, and the embarrass- 
ment of governing a country three thousand miles distant ! That this 
separation was at length effected by violence, and the horrors of a civil 
war, is to be attributed solely to the ignorance and corruption of the 
many, and the perilous bigotry of a few." — JVo. 24, Edinburgh Review. 

" Let our jealousy burn as it may ; let our intolerance of America be 
as unreasonably violent as we please ; still, it is plain that she is a power, 
in spite of us, rapidly rising to supremacy ; or, at l^st, that each year 
so mightily augments her strength, as to overtake, by a most sensible 
distance, even the most formidable of her competitors." 

JYo. 49, Edinburgh Revieiv. 

" In one of my late rambles, I accidentally fell into the company of 
half a dozen gentlemen, who were engaged in a warm dispute about 
some political affair ; which naturally drew me in for a share of the con- 
versation. 

"Amongst a multiplicity of other topics, we took occasion to talk of 
the different characters of the several nations of Europe ; when one of 
the gentlemen, cocking his hat, and assuming such an air of importance 
as if he had possessed all the merit of the English nation in his own 
person, declared that the IJutch were a parcel of avaricious wretches ; 
the French a set of flattering sycophants; that the Germans were 
drunken sots, and beastly gluttons ; and tlie Spaniards proud, haughty, 
and surly tyrants ; but that, in bravery, generosity, clemency, and in 
every other virtue, the Fjuglish excelled all the rest of the world. 

" This very learned &nd judicious remark was received with a general 
smile of approbation by all the company — all, I mean, but your humble 
servant." Goldsjiith's Essays — Essay XL 



PART I. 



SECTION I. 



OF THE POLITICAL AND MERCANTILE JEALOUSY OF 
GREAT BRITAIN. 

" AMERICA is destined, at all events, to be a great and SECT, l, 
" powerful nation. In less than a century, she must have a ^..^N-^fc^ 
" population of at least seventy or eighty millions. War can- 
" not prevent, and it appears from experience, can scarcely 
" retard, this natural multiplication. All these people will 
" speak English; and, according to the most probable conjec- 
" ture, will live under free governments, whether republican 
" or monarchical, and will be industrious, well educated, and 
" civilized. Within no very great distance of time, there- 
" fore, — within a period to which those who are now en- 
" tering life may easily survive, — America will be one of 
" the most powerful and important nations of the earth; 
" and her friendship and commerce will be more valued, 
" in all probability, than that of any European state." 
Such were the speculations of the Edinburgh Review, in 
the year 1814. In looking forward to what this journal 
predicts, — to the supremacy in power and character which the 
North Americans are destined to reach, — there is something 
not only curious, but instructive, in the fact, that they have 
been and are more contemned and defamed, than any other 
people of whom history has kept a record. Compared with 
our fate in this respect, that of Boeotia among the ancients, 
severe as it was and sufficiently unjust, may be described as 
condign and lenient. It was not alone in their exemption 
from political and commercial dependence, that the colonies 

VOL. I. A 



3 POLITICAI AND 

PART I. of Greece may be said to have been more fortunate than those 
"-^"^'"^ of modern Europe. Neither enlightened Greece, — nor even 
imperious Rome, or rapacious Carthage whose colonial policy 
bore a nearer resemblance to the modern, — made perpetual 
war upon the reputation of its emigrant offspring. The parent 
state was sometimes exorbitant in its demands, and tyrannical 
in the exercise of its superior force; but the colony had not to 
contend with a system of universal detraction; — to serve as a 
mark for the arrogance, spleen, or jocularity of orators, poets, 
and reviewers. 

The wise man of Europe — homo sapiens EuropcB — not 
satisfied with sneering and railing at these distant settlements, 
conspired, at one time, to decry nature herself in her opera- 
tions on the new continent: and the theories of Buffon, Ray- 
nal, and De Paw, so fashionable and authoritative during a 
certain prriod, though now so entirely exploded, are to be 
cited in illustration of the state of the European mind towards 
the Western World. The feature not the least remark- 
able, belonging to this case is, that the particular mother- 
country which might have been expected to be most tender of 
the feelings and character of her colonies, out of a due regard 
to justice, gratitude, and her own interests, was, at times, 
the most scornful in her tone, and the loudest in the chorus of 
obloquy. Great Britain continued to throw out sarcasms 
and reproaches against her North American kinsmen, after 
the continent of Europe had adopted the opposite style, and 
had even passed into an enthusiastic admiration. We may 
pardon vapouring, and invective, and affected derision, at 
the juncture when her authority was directly questioned, and 
her colossal power braved by the thirteen pigmy communities 
of provincials; and some allowance is to be made for the play 
of passions strongly excited, during and immediately after 
the struggle, by which she lost so valuable a portion of her 
empire: But the same course has been pursued without any 
abatement of virulence or exception of topics, towards these 
Independent United States; it has not been abandoned after a 
second war, and after a development of character, resources, 
and destinies, which would seem sufficient to silence malice 
and subdue the most sturdy prejudice. When the "planta- 
tions" had grown into colonies, England still thought and 
spoke of them as the plantations: — since the colonies have 
transformed themselves i.ito an independent and powerful 
nation, it is the colonies, with an imagery to which increased 
jealousy and despite have added new and more hideous chime- 
ras, that are yet seen in the English speculum. 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. i 

We know that some of the states of antiquity harboured a SECT. I. 
mischievous jealousy of the prosperity, spirit, and aims of their "''*'~v"^ 
colonies; but it was only when the latter had become truly 
formidable; had attained to an equality of strength, and given 
unequivocal evidence of indifference, estrangement, or hos- 
tility. But among the modern colonies, the Anglo-North 
American, were precisely those which stood the farthest from 
this relation, — which, in all stages of their existence, whether 
we consider their dispositions, or the general circumstances of 
their condition, presented the least cause of distrust or alarm 
to the powerful parent. One of a truly magnanimous and 
judicious character would have seen, as I hope to prove, abun- 
dant reason for treating them with he utmost latitude of in- 
dulgence and " ceremonious kindness." England, however, 
is the mother country, who, although perpetually proclaiming 
the weakness, as well as insulting the origin, and vilifying 
the pursuits of her plantations^ conceived the earliest fears 
for her supremacy; who displayed, throughout, the keenest po- 
litical and mercantile jealousy. It is true, that the other 
European powers eslablished and maintained in their settle- 
ments on this continent, a stricter commercial monopoly, and 
more arbitrary systems of internal administration. It is 
equally true, however, that England always sought to secure 
to herself the carriage of the produce of her North American 
colonies; to engross their raw materials, and to furnish them 
with the articles of every kind which they required from 
abroad: That if, from the cupidity or indifference of her mo- 
narchs, charters of a liberal genius were granted to the first 
settlers — if, from a like cause, or national embarrassments, 
commonwealths thus cast in the mould of freedom, were suf- 
fered to acquire consistency, and to become identified as it 
were with their first institutions — she made incessant attempts 
to destroy those charters, and substitute a despotic rule. Her 
writers on the trade and general politics of the empire, her 
colonial servants, civil and military, continually called for a 
more rigorous monopoly and subjection. It was owing to 
extraneous events, and to the firmness, vigilance and dexterity 
of the provinces, that they remained in possession of their 
liberties. I scarcely need remark in addition, that it was a 
scheme of administration, tending to place them on the level 
of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, which impelled them 
to attempt and achieve their independence. 

The main purpose of this work imposes upon me the task, 
of adducing some portion of the abundant evidence which 
books afford, in support of the general assertions made above: 



4 POLITICAL AND 

PART I. And it appears to me not unadvisable on other grounds, to 
^.^^•^mim' refresh the memory of the public, with respect to the early 
dispositions and proceedings of Great Britain, towards these 
North American communities. I will begin with the point to 
which I have last adverted — her political and mercantile 
jealousy. 

1. This feeling was coeval with the foundation of the colonies. 
Nothing similar is to be traced so high in the colonial history 
even of Spain or Portugal. We have the following testimony 
in Hume's Appendix to his account of the reign of James I. 
" What chiefly renders the reign of James memorable, is the 
commencement of the English colonies in America; colonies 
established on the noblest footing that has been known in any 
age or nation." 

" Speculative reasoners, during that age, raised many ob- 
jections to the planting those remote colonies; and foretold, 
that, after draining their mother country of inhabitants, they 
would soon shake off her yoke, and erect an independent go- 
vernment in America." 

In the excellent article on the British colonies, of Pos- 
tlethwayt's Universal Dictionary of Trade, there is a more 
particular statement to the same effect. 

" It is certain that from the very time Sir Walter Raleigh, the father 
of our English colonies, and his associates, first projected these esta- 
blishments, there have been persons who have found an interest in 
misrepresenting or lessening the value of them. When the intention 
of improving these, distant countries, and the advantages that were 
hoped for thereby, were first set forth, there were some who treated 
them not only as chimerical, but as dangerous : They not only insinu- 
ated the uncertainty of the success, but the depopulating the nation. 
These, and other objections, flowing either from a narrowness of un- 
derstanding or of heart, have been disproved by experience," &c. 8cc. 

" The difficulties which will always attend such kind of settlements 
at the beginning, proved a new cause of clamour; many malignant 
suggestions were made about sacrificing so many Englishmen to the 
obstinate desire of settling colonies in countries, which produced very 
little advantage. But, as these difficulties were gradually surmounted, 
those complaints vanished. No sooner were those lamentations over 
than others arose in their stead ; when it could no longer be said that 
the colonies were useless, it was alleged tliat they were not useful 
enough to their mother country ; that while we were loaded with 
taxes they were absolutely free ; that the planters lived like princes, 
while the inhabitants of England laboured hard for a tolerable sub- 
sistence. This produced customs and impositions on plantation com- 
modities," &c. &c. 

Within little more than a generation ofter the commence- 
ment of the plantations, the royal government anxiously began 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. O 

those formal inquiries into their population and manufactures, sect, l 
which were so often renewed until the period of our revolt, ^«^-^^-'»-' 
and of which ihe results, as to manufactures, served to place 
the jealousy that provoked them in a ludicrous and pitia- 
ble light. In the reign of Charles I. commissioners were de- 
puted loascertain the growth and dispositions of New England: 
A; d we find her agent in London, in the time of Cromwell, 
informing one of his constituents, that, even then, there were 
not wanting many in England, to whom her privileges were 
matter of envy, and who eagerly watched every opportunity 
of abridging her political liberties and faculties of trade. 
Besides emissaries of the description just mentioned, the 
ministry of Charles II. despatched spies to watch over the con- 
duct and views of the royal governors in America. From the 
same motive, printing presses were denied to the plantations. 
We are told by Chalmers, that " no printing press was allowed 
in Virginia;" that " in New England and New York there 
were assuredly none permitted^'''' and that " the other pro- 
vinces probably were not more fortunate."* When Andros 
was appointed by James II. captain-general of all the northern 
colonies, he was instructed " to allow of no printing press." 
In an official report of Sir William Berkeley, governor of 
Virginia, dated 20th June, 1671, there is the following charac- 
teristic passage: — " I thank God we have no free schools, nor 
any printing; and I hope we shall not have them these hun- 
dred years. For learning has brought disobedience, and 
heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged 
them and libels against the best government: God keep us 
from both." Accordingly, every effort was made to shut 
out the pestilent tree of knowledge. On the appointment of 
Lord Effingham to the government of Virginia, in 1683, he 
was ordered, agreeably to the prayer of Sir William Berke- 
ley, " to allow no person to use a printing press on any occa- 
sion whatever." 

The erect port, and firm tone, of the legislature of the infant 
Massachusetts, not only filled the cabinet of Charles II. with 
alarm for the metropolitan sovereignty, but actually overawed 
them, so as to prevent the measures of repression which would 
otherwise have been pursued; and to maintain the province 
in the license of action necessary for its prosperity. Curious 
and remarkable evidence on these heads is extant in the Me- 



Political Annals of the United Colonies, chap. 15. 



6 POLITICAL AND 

PART I. moirs of Evelyn,* who was one of the council of Charles II. 
'^ ""v-^ His language deserves to be quoted. 

" The 6th of May, 1670, I went to council, where was produced 
a irost exact and ample information of the state of Jamaica, and of 
th£ best expedients as to JVezy England, on which there was a long 
debate ; but at length 'twas concluded that, if any, it should be only 
a conciliating paper at first, or civil letter, till we had better informal 
tion of y' present face oi X\\\n^s, since ive understood they luere a people 
almost upon the very brink of renouncing any dependence on y" crown."—' 
Vol. i. p. 415, 

" The first thing we did at our next meeting, was to settle the form 
of a circular letter to the governors of all his Majesty's plantations 
and territories in the West Indies and Islands thereof, to give them 
notice to whom they should apply themselves on all occasions, and to 
render us an account of their present state and government, but 
-what -we most insisted upon was, to know the condition of J\'e^u England, 
which, appearing to be very independent as to their regard to Old England 
or his JSIajesty, rich and strong as they now were, there were great de- 
bates in what style to write to them ; for the condition of that colony 
was such, that they were able to contest with all other plantations 
about them, and there was fear of their breakimg from all dependence 
on this natio7i. " — Ibid. 

" The matter in debate in council on the 3d of August, 1671, was, 
whether we should send a deputy to New England, requiring them of 
the Massachusetts, to restore such to their limits and respective pos- 
sessions as had petitioned the council ; this to be the open commis- 
sion only, but in truth with secret instructions to informe the council of the 
conditi'm of those colonies, and whether they were of such power as to be 
able to resist fas JVTa^y, and declare for themselves as independent of the 
crowne, which we were told, and which of late years made them re- 
fractorie. Coll. Middleton being called in, assur'd us they might be 
curb'd by a few of his Ma'v» first rate fregats, to spoile their trade 
with the Islands ; but tho' my Lo : President was not satisfied, the rest 
were, and we did resolve to advise his Ma'y to send commiss'rs with 
a formal commission for adjusting boundaries, &c. with some other 
instructions." — p. 417- 

"We deliberated in council, on the 12th of JanX, 1672, on some fit 
person to go as commissef to inspect their actions in A''ew Eiiglafid, znd 
from time to time report how tiiat people stood affected." — p. 423. 

When the real amount of the " riches and strength, and the 
power to resist," mentioned in these extracts, is traced in the 
returns made from New England at the era in question, it is 
difficult to think of the apprehensions of the British court, 
with any degree of seriousness. 

2. The fisheries, shipping, and foreign West India trade of 
the colonies had scarcely become perceptible, before the Bri- 
tish merchants and West India planters caught and sounded 

* A work of a very interesting cast in all respects, published in Lon- 
don in 1818, in 2 vols, quarto. The article devoted to it in the Quar- 
terly Review has, no doubt, made the most of my readers acquainted 
with its general character. 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 1 

the alarm. As soon as the colonists, in the progress of wealth SECT. L 
and popalatioii, undertook to manufacture, for their own con- ^-^~v-^- 
sumption, a few articles of the first necessity, such as hats, 
paper, &c, a clamour was raised by the manufacturers in 
England, and the power of ihv, British government was ex- 
erted to remove the cause of the complaint. The Discourse 
on Trade, of Sir Josiah Child, a work published in 1670, 
but written in 1665, and long considered as of the highest 
authority, expresses, in the passages which I am about to 
quote, the prevailing opinions of the day. " Certainly it is 
" the interest of England to discountenance and abate the 
" number of planters at Newfoundland, for if they should in- 
" crease, it would in a (e\v years happen to us, in relation to 
" that country, as it has to the fishery at New England, which 
" many years since was managed by English ships from the 
" western ports; but as plantations there increased, it fell to 
" the sole employment of people settled there, and nothing of 
" that trade left the poor old Englishmen, but the liberty of 
" carrying now and then, by courtesy or purchase, a ship load 
" of fish to Bilboa, when their own New English shipping are 
" better employed, or not at leisure to do it." 

" New England is the most prejudicial plantation to this 
" kingdom. — I am now to write of a people, whose frugality, 
*' industry and temperance, and the happiness of whose laws 
" and institutions, promise to them long life, with a wonderful 
" increase of people, riches and power; and although no men 
" ought to envy that virtue and wisdom in others, which themselves 
" either can or will not practise, but rather to commend and ad- 
'' mire it; yet I think it is the duty of every good man primarily 
" torespectthe welfare of his native country; and therefore, 
" though I may offend some whom I would not willingly dis- 
" please, I cannot omit, in the progress of this discourse, to 
" take notice of some particulars, wherein Old England suffers 
" diminution by the growth of the colonies settled in New 
" England." * * *= 

" Of all the American plantations, his majesty has none so 
" apt for the building of shipping as New England, nor any 
'' comparably so qualified for the breeding of seamen, not only 
" by reason of the natural industry of that people, but princi- 
" pally by reason of their cod and mackerel fisheries; and in 
" my poor opinion, there is nothing more prejudicial, and in 
" prospect more dangerous to any mother kingdom, than the 
" increase of shipping in her colonies, plantations, or pro- 
" vinces," &c.— Chap. 10. 

Illustrations of the spirit testified in these extracts 



b POLITICAL AND 

PART I, from Child, may be collected from the work of Joshua 
'-^^■~^'"'*>^ Gee, " On the Trade and Navigation of Great Britain," pub- 
lished at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and also held 
in great estimation. This writer proposed plans " for mak- 
ing the plantation trade more profitable to England, by 
strengthening the act of navigation," but suggested, at the same 
time, the expediency of suffering some of the plantation com- 
modities to be carried directly to the straits of the Mediter- 
ranean. He thought it necessary too, to assign many reasons 
why the " plantations" neither sought nor could acquire in- 
dependence. The following passages are from his thirty- 
first chapter. 

" But before I proceed to show the great advantage those additional 
materials would be to carry on the aforesaid manufactures, I think 
proper to take notice of an objection made by some gentlemen, which 
is, that if we encourage the plantations, they will grow rich, and set up 
for themselves, and cast off the English government." 

" I have considered those objections abundance of times, the of- 
tener I think of them, the less ground I see for such doubts and 
jealousies." 

" It must be allowed, New England has shewn mi uncommon stiffness. 
We think, however, all judicious men, when they come to examine 
thoroughly into their fears, will see they are groundless ; and that as it 
seems impossible for the other colonies to joyn m any such design, so 
nothing could be more against their own interest: For if New Eng- 
land should ever attempt to be independent of this kingdom, the stop- 
ping their supplying the sugar islands, and coasting and fishing trade, 
would drive them to the utmost difficulties to subsist as aforesaid ; and 
of consequence the part they .have in that trade would fall into hands 
of other colonies, which would greatly increase their riches. But if 
some turbulent spirited men should ever be capable of raising any 
tlefection, a small squadron of light frigates would entirely cut ofi' 
their trade, and if that did not do, the government would be forced, 
contrary to their practice, to do what other nations do of choice, viz. 
place standing forces among them to keep them in orde^ and oblige 
them to raise money to pay them. We do not mention this with any 
appreliension that ever they will give occasion, but to shew the conse- 
quences that miLst naturally follow." 

" Some persons who endeavour to represent this colony in the 
worst light, would persuade us they would put themselves under a 
foreign power, rather than not gratify their resentments," &c. 

•' Now as people have have been filled with fears, that the colonies, 
if encouraged to raise rough materials, would set up for themselves ; a 
little regulation would remove all tiiose jealousies out of the way, as 
aforesaid," &.c- 

" It is to be hoped this method would allay the heat that some peo- 
ple have shewn (without reason) for destroying tlie iron works in liie 
plantations, and pulling down all their forges ; tiiki?i!i- away in a ■violent 
manner, their estates and properties, preventing the husbandmen from getting 
their plough shares, carts, or other utensils mended ; destroying the manu- 
facture of ship building, by depriving them of the liberty of making 
bolts, spikes, or other things proper for carrying on that work ; by 
which article, returns are made for purchasing woollen manufactures, 
which is of more than ten times the profit that is brought into this 
kingdom by the exports of iron manufactures." 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. » 

" The present age is so far unacquainted with the cause of the in- SECT. I. 

crease of our riches, that they i-atlier interrupt than encourage it, y_^ ,^_ -^ ■ 
and instead of" enlarging, lay hold of some small trifling things, which 
they think may touch their private interest, rather than promote the 
general good ; and if tlicy think any commodity from the plantations 
interferes with something we have at home, some hasty step is taken to 
prevent it ; so that for the sake of saving a penny, we often deprive 
ourselves of things of a thousand times the value." 

The report made in 1731, at the command of the British par- 
liament, by the Board of Trade and Plantations, concerning the 
*' trades carried on, and manufactures set up, in the colonies," 
betrays much disquietude, and recommends that, " some ex- 
pedient be fallen upon to direct the thoughts of the colonists 
from undertakings of this kind; so much the rather, because 
these manufactures in process of time, may be carried on in a 
greater degree, unless an early stop be put to their progress," 
The report carefully notes that in New England " by a paper 
mill set up three years ago, they make to the value of ^200 
sg. yearly.'^'' The measures adopted by ihe parliament in 1732 
and 1733, were symptomatic of the morbid sensibility com- 
mon to all classes of politicians as well as traders. By the 
act " for the better securing and encouraging the trade of his 
majesty's sugar colonies in America," the interests of New 
England were sacrificed to those of the sugar planters. 

The petition of Rhode Island and Providence, against the 
sugar colony bill, occasioned a debate in the House of Com- 
mons in 1733, some parts of which deserve to be copied as 
interesting in a double point of view. 

" Sir John Barnard moved for leave to bring up the petition. — " 

" Sir Wm. Yonge said, I must take notice of one thing which I have 
observed in the petition. They therein tell us, that as to the bill 
now depending before us, they apprehend it to be against their char- 
ter. This, I must say, is something very extraordinary ; and in my 
opinion, looks very like aiming at an independence, and disclaiming 
the authority and jurisdiction of this House, as if this House had not a 
power to tax them, or to make any laws for the regulating the affairs 
of their colonies ; therefore if there were no other reason for our not 
receiving the petition, on this single account 1 should be against it." 

" Mr. Wennington — I hope tl)e petitioners have no charter which 
debars this House from taxing them as well as any other subjects of 
this nation. I am sure they can have no such charter." 

" Sir John Barnard alleged tliat the language of the petitioners was 
* that they humbly conceive, that the bill now depending, if passed 
into a law, would be highly prejudicial to their charter.' It maybe 
that this House has sometimes refused to receive petitions from some 
parts of Britain, against duties to be laid on ; but this can be no rea- 
son why the petition I have now in my hand should be rejected. The 
people in every part of Britain have a representative in this House, 
who is to take care of their particular interest — and they may, by 
means of their representative in this House, offer what reasons' thev 
think proper against any duties to be laid on. But the people whis 
VOL. I. B 



10 POLITICAL AND * 

PART 1. are the present petitioners, have no particular representatives in this 
■ _0~ -^_ ■ House, therefore, they liave no other way of applying or offering their 

reasons lo this House, but in the way of being lieard at the bar of 

the House, by their agent here in England. Therefore, the case of 

this petition is ar. exception." 
" The question being put for bringing up the petition, passed in the 

negative." — f Parliamentarii History. J 

The trade of the norihern colonies with the foreign West 
India Islands, would have been totally prohibited, according 
to the prayer of the sugar planters, had not the parliament 
apprehended distant consequences, of a nature incompatible 
with the general Brilisli policy as to France.* The spirit of the 
legislation under review, is strikingly exemplified in the law 
of 1733, to prevent the ' exportation of hats out of the plan- 
tations in America, and to restrain the number of appren- 
* tices taken by the hat makers, in the said plantations, &c.* 
So also, in the act of 1750, prohibiting, under severe penal- 
ties, the erection of any slicling-mill, plating-forge, or furnace 
for making steel, &c. Heavy complaints were made in Great 
Britain, that the people of New England " not satisfied with 
carrying out their own produce, had become carriers for the 
other colonies." The injustice of the restraints imposed or 
solicited, may be understood from the circumstance that 
New England had no staple to exchange for the British 
manufactures. " Hats," says the Account of the European 
Settlements,! " are made in New England, which in a clan- 
" destine way, find a good vent in all the other colonies. The 
" setting up this, and other manufactures, has been, in a great 
" measure, a matter necessary to them; for, as they have not 
" been properly encouraged in some staple commodity by 
" which they might communicate with their mother country, 
" while they were cut off from all other resources, they must 
" either have abandoned the country, or have found means of 
" employing their own skill and industry to draw out of it the 
" necessaries of lit'e. The same necessity, together with their 
" convenience for building and manning ships, has made them 
" the carriers for the other colonies." 

New England, Massachusetts particularly, was constantly 



* See Account of the European Settlements in America, vol. ii. p. 
179. Moreover, according to the same authority, " The northern colo- 
nies declared, that if they were deprived of so great a brancli of their 
trade, it must necessitate tliem to the establishment of manufactures. 
For, if tliey were cut of;' from their foreign trade, tliey never coulil 
purchase in England the many things for the use or the ornament of 
life, whiclithey have from thence, Stc." 

\ Ibid, p. 175. A. D. 175". 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. U 

arraigned and threatened, for contempt of the act of navlga- SECT. l. 
tion, and the subsequent regulations of a like purport, although, v^-v-^ 
by the confession of the board of trade itself, in its reports, 
nature left them no alternative but disobedience, or a long 
and feeble infancy. These restraints, — those relating to ma- 
nufactures, at least, — were as unnecessary, as vexatious and 
unjust. Our experience since llic separation, has demonstrated 
the extravagance of the apprehensions of the mother country, 
when referred to New England at the beginning of the last 
century. The selfishness must have been extreme, the 
jealousy exquisite, which generated liic phantoms of an in- 
dependent empire and rival manufactures in that quarter, 
at so early a period. The opinions of Adam Smith, concern- 
ing the British legislation generally, in the case of the Ame- 
rican colonies, carry with them an authority not to be resisted, 
and belong especially to an exposition, such as the one in which 
I am engaged. I am the more strongly tempted to adventure 
upon pretty copious extracts from the seventh chapter of his 
fourth book, in which he particularly treats of that legislation, 
since most of our domestic historians, inattentive to the cry, 
if I may be allowed the phrase, of the very facts which they 
relate, talk volubly of the " wise and liberal policy," of Great 
Britain.* 

"The policy of Europe has very little to boast of, either in the ori- 
ginal establishment, or so far as concerns their internal government, in 
the subsequent prosperity of tlie colonies of America." 

" Folly and injustice seem to have been the principles which pre- 
sided over, and directed the first projectof establishing those colonies ; 
the folly of hunting after gold and silver mines, and the injustice of 
coveting the possession of a country whose harmless natives, far from 
having ever injured the people of Europe, had received the first ad- 
venturers with every mark of kindness and hospitality." 

"The adventurers, indeed, who formed some of the later establish- 
ments, joined to the chimerical project of finding gold and silver 
mines, other motives more reasonable and more laudable ; but even 
these motives do very little honour to the policy of Europe." 

" The English Puritans, restrained at home, fled for freedom to 
America; and established there the four governments of Neu England. 
The English Catholics, treated -with much greater injustice, established 
that of Maryland ; the Quakers, that of Pennsylvania, &c. &c." 

" The government of England contributed scarce any thing towards 
effectuating the establishment of sf^me of its most important colonies 
in North America." 

" When those establishments were effectuated, and had become so 
considerable as to attract the attention of the mother country, the first 
regulations which she made with regard to them had alwa3'S in \ lew to 
keep to herself the monopoly of their commerce ; to confine llicir mar- 
ket, and to enlarge her own at their expense, and conseqitentlt/ rather to 

* See Ramsay — Colonial History, chap, i 



1^ POLITICAL ANd 

PART I. clamp and discourage, than to quicken and fonvard the course of their pros* 
v^^-^ -^_ ■ perity. In the diff'erent ways in which this monopoly has been exer- 
cised, consists one of the most essential differences in the policy of the 
different European nations with regard to tlieir colonics. The best of 
them all, that of England, is only somexvhat less illiberal and oppressive than 
that nf any of the rest." 

" England purchased, by some of her subjects who felt uneasy at 
home, a great estate in a distant country. The price indeed was very 
small, and instead of thirty years purchase, the ordinary price of land 
in the jiresent times, it amounted to little more than the expense of 
the different equipments wliicli made the first discovery, reconnoitered 
the coast, and took a fictitious possession of the country. Tiie land 
was good and of great extent, and the cultivators having plenty of good 
ground to work upon, and being for some time at liberty to sell their 
produce where they pleased, became, in the course of little more than 
thirty or forty years, (between 1620 and 1660) so numerous and thriv- 
ing a people, that the sliop-keepers and other traders of England, 
wished to secure to themselves the monopoly of their custom Without 
pretending, therefore, that they had paid any part, either of the original 
purchase money, or of the subsequent expense of improvement, they 
petitioned the parliament that the cultivators of America might, for 
the future, be confined to their shop ; first, for buying all the goods 
which they wanted from Europe ; and, secondly, for selling all such 
parts of their own produce as those traders might fnd it convenient to 
buy, for they did not find it convenient to buy every part of it. Some 
parts of it imported into England might have interfered with some of 
the trades, which they themselves carried on at home. Those parti- 
cular parts of it, therefore, tliey were willing that the colonists should 
sell where they could ; the farther 'iff the better ; aiid, upon that account, 
proposed that their market sliouldbe confined to the countries south of 
Cape Finisterre. A clivuse in tl»e famous act of navigation established 
this truly shop-keeper proposal into a law." 

" The maintenance of this monopoly has hitherto been the princi- 
pal, or more proj^erly, perhaps, the sole end and purpose of the do- 
minion which Great Britain assumes over her colonies. It is the prin- 
cipal badge of their dependency, and it is the sole fruit which has 
hitherto been gathered from that dependency. Whatever expense 
Great Rritain has hitherto laid out in maintaining this dependency, has 
really been laid outi?i order to support this monopoly." 

"While Great Britain encourages in America the manufactures of 
pig and bar iron, by exempting them from duties, to which the like 
commodities are subject, when Imported from any other country, she 
imposes an absolute prohibition upon the erection of steel-furnaces 
and slit-mills in any of her American plantations. She will not suffer 
her colonies to work in those more refined manufactures even of their 
own consumption ; but insists upon their purchasing of her merchants 
and manufacturers all goods of this kind which they have occasion 
for." 

"She prohibits the exportation from one province to another by 
water, and even the carriage by land on horseback or in a cart, of hats, 
of wools and woollen goods, of the produce of America ; a regulation 
which efieciually prevents the establishment of anv manufacture of 
.such commodities for distant sale, and confines the industry of her 
colonists in this way to such coarse and household manufactures, as a 
private family generally makes for its own use, or for that of some of 
its neighbours in the same province." 

" To prohibit a great people, however, from making all that they can of 
every pari of their o~u;n produce, or from employing their stock and industry 
in the 'ivay that they j;ulge most advantageous to themselves, is a manifest 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. IS 

'Molation of the most sacred riglds of mankind. Though Ihey had not SFXT. I. 
been prohibited from establishing such manufactures, yet in their pre- _r -^_ - 
sent state of improvement, a regard to their own interest would, pro- 
bably, have prevented them from domg- so. In their present state of im- 
provement, those prohibitions, perhaps, without cramping their indus- 
try, or restraining it from any employment to which it would have gone 
of its own accord, are only Impevlincnt badges of slavery, imposed upon 
them, without any sufficient reason, by the groundless jealousy of the 
merchaiits and maimfacturers of the mother country" 

" Of the greater part of the regulations concerning the colony trade, 
the merchants who carry it on, it must be observed, have been the prin- 
cipal advisers. We must not wonder, therefore, if, in the greater part 
of them, their interest has been more considered than either that of 
the colonies or that of the mother country. Tn their exclusive privi- 
lege of supplying the colonies witli all the goods which they wanted 
from Europe, and of purchasing all such parts of their surplus pro- 
duce as could not interfere with any of the trades which they them- 
selves carried on at home, the interest of the colonies was sacrificed 
to the interests of those merchants." 

" If the whole surplus produce of America in grain of all sorts, in 
salt provisions, and in hsh, had been put into the enumeration, and 
thereby forced into the market of Great Britain, it would have intei- 
fered too much with the pioduce of the industry of our own people. 
It was probably not so mucli from any regard to the interest of America, 
as from a jealousy of this interference, that those important commodi- 
ties have not only been kept out of the enumeration, but that the im- 
portation into Great Britain of all grain, except rice, and of all salt 
provisions, has, in the ordinary state of the law, been prohibited." 

" Tlie non-enumerated commodities could originally be exported to 
all parts of the world. Lumber and rice having been once put into 
the enumeration, when they were afterwards taken out of it, were 
confined, as to the European market, to the countries that lie south of 
Cape Finisterre. By the 6th of George III. c. 51. all non-enumerated 
commodities were subjected to the like restriction. The parts of Eu- 
rope which lie south of Cape Finisterre, are not manufacturing coun- 
tries, and we were less jealous of the colony ships carrying home from 
them any manufactures which could interfere with our own." 

3. As the plantations advanced in numbers, strength, 
wealth, and manufactures, they awakened a still more lively 
distrust, and jealous vigilance, in the mother country. In 
1715, a bill was brought into the House of Commons to abolish 
all the charter governments; against which tyrannical project 
the agent of Massachusetts, Dumnier, published an elaborate 
and masterly pamphlet. One of the sections of his " De- 
fence of the New England Charters," is headed thus, — " The 
objection that the charter colonies will grow great and formi- 
dable, answered:" — and the author details, with much anxiety, 
the circumstances which, in his opinion, established the pro- 
bability of the reverse. He begins his argument with stating, 
" There is one thing I have heard often urged against the 
" colonies, and indeed, it is what one meets from people of 
" all conditions and qualities. 'Tis said, that their increasing 
" numbers and wealth, joined to their great distance from 



14 



POLITICAL AND 



PART I. cc Qreat Britain, will give them an opportunity, in the course 
"'■^^^'^"^^ " of some years, to throw off their dependence on the nation, 
*' and declare themselves a free state, if not curbed in time. 
" J have often wondered to hear some great men profess their 
" belief of the feasibleness of this, &c."* The House of 
Commons continued, as may be seen, from the portion given 
above, of their debate of 1733, on the petition from Rhode 
Island, to be tremblingly alive on this point. It displayed 
its sensibility even in a more marked way, a few years after. 
In 1740, it voted, upon the complaint preferred by the 
general court of Massachusetts, against governor Belcher, 
for denying to them the disposal of the public monies, — 
" That the complaint, contained in the New England 
" memorial and petition, was frivolous and groundless; an 
" high insult upon his majesty's government, and tending to 
" shake off the dependency of the said colony upon this 
*,' kingdom, to which, by law and right, they are and ought to 
" be subject." When the general court ventured to censure 
one of their agents, Mr. Dunbar, for giving evidence before 
parliament on the bill for the better securing the trade of the 
sugar colonies, the House of Commons voted, nem. con. — 
" That the presuming to call any person to account, or pass a 
censure upon him; for evidence given by such person before that 
House, was an audacious proceeding, and an high violation 
of the privileges of that House." 

The fate of the Albany plan of union, familiar to the me- 
mory of all who have read our history, affords additional 
proof of the temper which it is my object to illustrate. A 
confederacy of the colonies for the purpose of defence against 
the French and Indians, was at first instigated by the British 
government; but it could tolerate no arrangements except 
such as were incompatible with their liberties. It finally pre- 
ferred leaving them exposed to the most formidable dangers, 
and itself to the cost and trouble of their protection, rather 
than acquiesce in any scheme of coalition, in the execution 
of which, they might, to use the language of Franklin, 
"grow too military, and feel their own strength."! In the 
pamphlet which this great statesman published, in 1760, 
to show the impolicy of restoring Canada to the French, there 
is a section allotted to the question, " whether the American 
colonies were dangerous in their nature to Great Britain." He 
found it necessary, on every occasion, when an advantage 
was sought for them, to set in formal array, all the considera- 

* Page 73. 

f See Memoirs of Frariklin, p. 143, American edition. 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 15 

lions which pleaded against the bare supposition, of their being SECT. I. 
disposed or able, to effect their independence. \^^~^.^^ 

To lessen the danger, or obviate new hazards, for her sove- 
reignty and monopoly, England embraced the policy, of confining 
the settlements in North America as much as possible to the sea 
coast. The great points of preventing the French power from 
being immoveably established at their back, and over the whole 
vast interior; of securing the Atlantic provinces not only from 
this evil, but from their cruel scourge — the Indians; of opening 
the fruitful and beautiful countries beyond the Appalachian 
mountains to English cultivation and empire,were all postponed 
to views, of which it is difficult to say whether they were more 
selfish or short sighted. The plan of a colony on the Ohio, 
for the salutary and noble purposes just enumerated, was con- 
ceived in America in the middle of the last century, submitted 
fruitlessly to the British government in 1 768, and offered anew 
by Dr. Franklin, in 1770, with the engagementon the part of 
the projectors, to be at the whole expense of establishing and 
maintaining the civil administration of the country to be set- 
tled. A few extracts from the two Reports* of the Board of 
Trade and Plantations, on the subject, to the Lords of the privy 
council, will explain the favourite system in relation to the 
plantations. 

" The proposition of forming inland colonies in America is, we 
humbly conceive, entirely new: it adopts principles in respect to 
American settlements, different from what have hitherto been the po- 
licy of this kingdom, and leads to a system which, if pursued through 
all its consequences, is, in the present state of that country, of the 
greatest importance." 

" And first with regard to the policy, we take leave to remind your 
lordships of that principle which was adopted by this Board, and ap- 
proved and confirmed by his majesty, immediately after the treaty of 
Paris, viz. the confining the western extent of settlements to such u 
» distance from the sea coast, as that those settlements should lie 
within the reach of the tirade mid commerce of this kijigdoin, upon which 
the strength and riches of it depend ; and also of the exercise of that 
authority and. jurisdiction, which was conceived to be necessary for the 
preservation of the colonies, in a due subordination to, and dependence 
upon, the mother country ; and these we apprehend to have been two 
capital objects of his majesty's proclamation of the Tth of October, 1763, 
by which his majesty declares it to be his royal will and pleasure, to 
reserve, under his sovereignty, protection, and dominion, for the use of 
the Indians, all the lands not included within the three new govern- 
ments, the limits of which are described therein, as also all the lands 
and territories lying to the westward of the sources of the rivers 
which shall fall into the sea from the west and north-west, and by which 
all persons are forbid to make any purchases or settlements whatever, 
or to take possession of any of the lands above reserved, without spe- 
cial license for that purpose." 

* Fourth vol, Franklin's Works, article Ohio Settlement. 



16 



POLITICAL AND 



PART I. «' The same principles of policy, in reference to settlements at so 
v^>^ -^_- great a distance from the sea coast as to be out of the reach of all ad- 
vantag-eous intercourse with this kingdom, continue toe- is' in their 
full force and spirit ; and though various propositions for erecting new 
colonies in the interior parts of America have been- in cousegvenceof this 
extension of the houndarv line, submitted to the consideration of goveiviment, 
(2Kirt!Cularh' in that part of tlic country wherein arc situate<l the lands 
now prayed for, with a view to that object,) yet the dangers and disad- 
vantages of complying with such proposals have been so obvious, as 
to defeat every attempt made for carrying them into execution." 

" The efi'ect of the policy of this kingdom in respect to colonizing 
America, in those colonies where there has been sufficient time for 
that effect to discover itself, wdl, we humbly apprehend, be a very 
strong argument against formmg settlements in the interior coimtry ; 
more especially when erery advantage derived from an established 
government would naturally tend to draw the stream of population ; 
fertility of soil, and temperature of climate, ofT.n-ing superior inc'te- 
ments to settlers, toho, exposed to few hardships, ands'ruggUng ~uith few 
difficiiUies. could, ii-ith little labmir, earn an abundance for their own wants, 
but without a possibility of supplying ours with any considei able qnuntities." 

" Admitting that the settlers in the country in question a' e nume- 
rous as report states them to be, yet we submit that this is a fact which 
does, in the nature of it, operate strongly in point of argument against 
what is pi-oposed — for if the foregoing reasoning has any weight, it 
certainly ought to induce you to advise his majesty to take every me- 
thod to cAefA" the progress of these settlements, and not to make such 
grants of land as will have an immediate tendency to encourage them." 

The language of the royal servants of North America was 
of the same tenor with that of the Lords of Trade. The 
commander in chief of his majesty's forces there, wrote in 
1769, to lord Hillsborough, who presided over the colonial 
department, 

"As to increasing the settlements to respectable provinces, and 
to colonization in general terms in the remote countries, I conceive 
it altogether inconsistent with sound policy. I do not apprehend 
the inhabitants could have any commodities to barter for manufac- 
tures, except skins and furs, which will naturally decrease as the 
country increases in people, and the deserts are cultivated; so that 
in the course j)f a few years, necessity would force them to provide 
man\!f:ictures of some kind for themselves ; and wlien all connexion 
ujihcld by commerce with the mother country shall cease, it may be 
expected that an independency in her government will soon follow. 
The laying open new tracts of fertile coiuitry in moderate climates 
might lessen the present supply of the comiUodities of America, for 
it is the passion of every man to be a land holder, and the people have 
a natural disposition to rove in search of good land, however distant," 

The governor of Georgia, above named, is quoted with 
great deference by the Lords of Trade, as having written to 
them thus ; 

" This matter, my lords, of granting large bodies of land in the 
back parts of any of his majesty's northern colonies, appears to me 
in a very serious and alarming liglit ; and f humbly conceive, may 
be attended with the greatest and worst of consequences; for, my 
lords, if a vast territory be granted to any set of gentlemen, who 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. ^ * 

veally mean to people it, and actually do so, it must draw and carry SECT. I. 
out a great number of people from Great Britain ; and 1 apprehend, v^^-v-^^^ 
they will soon become a kind of separate and independent people, who 
will set up for themselves ; that they will soon have manufactures of 
their own, &c. in process of time, tliey will become formidable enough 
to oppose his majesty's authority," &c. 

It is curious, and demonstrative of the sense commonly en- 
tertained of the views of the British government, that some 
of the advocates for the project of interior settlements, in- 
sisted, that such establishments would serve as a check upon 
attempts, on the part of the old colonies, to become indepen- 
dent, by draining them of their population. There is, in fact, 
much plausibility in the suggestion, which is made in one of 
the memorials on the subject, of the year 1767 — that of ge- 
neral Lyman. " The period will doubtless come, when North 
" America will no longer acknowledge a dependence on any 
" part of Europe. But that period seems to be so remote, as 
" not to be at present an object of rational policy or human 
" prevention, and it will be rendered still more remote by 
" opening new scenes of agriculture, and widening the space 
" which the colonists must first completely occupy."* 

I shall not be considered as going wide of my subject, if I 
advert here, to the fact, that the British government has pur- 
sued, with respect to India, a policy similar to that recom- 
mended in the foregoing extracts, in relation to North Ame- 
rica. I need only appeal to the authority of Mills, who, in 
his " History of British India," uses this emphatic language, 
t' If it were possible for tiie English government to learn wis- 
" dom by experience, which governments rarely do, it might 
" at lust see, with regret, some of the effects of that illiberal, 
" cowardly, and short-sighted policy, under which it has taken 
'' the most solicitous precautions to prevent the settlement of 
" Engiishmien; trembling, forsooth, lest Englishmen, if al- 
" lowed to settle in India, should detest and cast off its yoke!" 
" It is wonderful to see how the English government, every 
" now and then, voluntarily places itself in the station of a 
" government existing in opposition to the people, a govern- 
" ment which hates, because it dreads the people, and is hated 
■ by them in its turn. Its deportment with regard to the resi- 
■' dence of the Englishmen in India, speaks these unfavour- 
'' able sentiments with a force which language could not 
" easily posst;ss."t 

The Edinburgh Review, in quoting the first of these para- 

* See Macpherson's Annals of Commerce. Quarto Ed, vol. iii. 469. 
f B. 6. vol. iii. p. 334, 336. 

Vol. 1.— C 



18 



POLITICAL AND 



PART I. graphs, affects, indeed, to donb! whether " the obstructions 
-^^"''^*^ " which have been thrown in the way of colonization in In- 
" dia, have arisen mainly from the idea that another nation of 
" Englishmen would spring up there, who might take upon 
" them to govern themselves;" and it cannot admit that " any 
" Englishman would be base enough not to wish to see another 
" America arise at a distance, which might relieve Britain 
" from the fear of lier rivality. '''''* But no one thai has read the 
masterly work of the historian whom I have just cited, will 
hesitate between his opinions on the subject, and those of any 
anonymous critic; and there is a corroborative circumstance 
too notorious to be questioned: I mean the attempt sanctioned 
in the same quarter, to prevent the diffusion of Christianity 
among the Hindoos, from an apprehension of danger to the 
British power.f I am myself unable to devise a juster or 
stronger commentary upon the policy towards the Noith Ame- 
rican colonies, than is furnished in the following general ob- 
servation of the Edinburgh critics, in allusion to the case of 
India. " We cannot conceive any thing more discreditable 
" to a government, than to place Itself in opposition to a mea- 
" sure, conducive, and almost essential to the prosperity of a 
" great empire, merely Ijccause it would be attended with a 
" chance, at some distant period, of a curtailment of the ex- 
" tent of- its dominions." 

It is not easy to forget that at the commencement of the ne- 
gociations at Ghent, in 1814, a policy was betrayed by the Bri- 
tish government, in the demands of its commissioners, touching 
a new Indian boundary, akin to that which discountenanced 
the plan of the Ohio settlement. Nor ought .we to forget the 
eloquent condemnation of the pretension of 1814, pronounced 
by Sir James Mackintosh, in the House of Commons, — a con- 
demnation equally due to his majesty's proclamation of the 
7th October, 1763, and to the system of the Lords of Trade. 
" The western frontier of North American cultivation is the 
" part of the globe in which civilization is making the most 
" rapid and extensive conquests on the wilderness. It is the 
" point where the race of man is the most progressive. To 

* No. 61. 

f See the " Christian Researches in Asia," of the Rev. Claudius 
Buchanan. — Tlie writer adduces a letter to himself, dated May 14, 1806, 
from Watson, Bishop of I.landaff, which contains the following passage: 
" Twenty yeare and more have now elapsed, since in a sermon before 
the House of Lords, I hinted {o the government the jjropriety of pay- 
ing regard to the propagation of Christianity in India; and I have 
since then, as fit occasion offered, privately, but nnsuccesf:fidbj, pressed 
the matter on the consideration of those in power." 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 19 

" forbid the purchase of land from the savages, is to arrest the SECT. I. 

" progress of mankind. — More barbarous than the Norman '^-^">'-^ 

" tyrants, who afforesied great tracts of arable land for their 

" sport, ministers attempted to stipulate that a territory quite as 

" great as the British islanJs, should be doomed to an eternal 

" desert. They laboured to prevent millions of freemen and 

" Christians from coming into existence. To perpetuate the 

" English authority in two provinces^ a large part of North 

" America was for ever to be a wilderness. The American 

" negociators, by their resistance to so insolent and extravagant 

" a demand, maintained the common cause of civilized men."* 

4. Emigration to the colonies proved, from the outset, a 
subject of alarm for the mother country. Her apprehension 
. from it was two-fold; of her own depopulation, and the trans- 
lation and decline of her manufactures. 

" The barbarism of our ancestors," says the author of the 
European Settlements in America, " could not comprehend 
" how a nation could grow more populous by sending out a part 
" of its people. We have lived to see this paradox made out 
" by experience, but we have not sufficiently profited of this 
" experience; since we begin, (in 1757,) some of us at least, 
" to think that there is a danger of dispeopling ourselves, by 
" encouraging neiv colonies, or increasing the old." 

Precautions were taken against too great an efflux from the 
kingdom, to America, even in the time of James I. and were 
renewed on several occasions in that of his successor. The 
circumstance is noticed by Hume in the following terms: — 
" The Puritans, restrained in England, shipped themselves 
" off for America, and laid there the foundations of a go- 
" vernment, which possessed all the liberty, both civil and 
" religious, of which they found themselves deprived in their 
" native country. But their enemies, unwilling that they 
" should any where enjoy ease and contentment, and dread- 
" ing, perhaps, the dangerous consequences of so disaffected 
" a colony, prevailed with the king to issue a proclamation, 
" debarring these devotees access even into those inhospitable 
" deserts. "t 

In 1637, a proclamation was issued by Charles I. " to re- 
" strain the disorderly transporting of his majesty's subjects to 
" the colonies without leave;" and in 1638, another, " com- 
" manding owners and masters of vessels, that they do not 
" fit out any with passengers and provisions to New England, 

* Speech on the Treaty with America — April 1815. 
t Chapter 52. 



20 roLlTlCAL ANU 

PART I, " without license from the Commissioners of Plantations." 
v,^^..,^..^ One incident of the operation of this interdict has attracted the. 

notice of all the historians, and is thus strikingly told by 

Robertson. 

" The number of the emigrants to America drew the attention of 
government, and appeared so formidable, that a proclamation was 
issued, prohibiting masters of ships from carrying passengers to New 
England, without special permission. On many occasions this injunc- 
tion was eluded or disregarded. Fatally for the king, it operated with 
full effect in one instance. Sir Arthur Haslerig, John Hampden, 
Oliver Cromwell, and some other persons, whose principles and views 
coincided with theirs, impatient to enjoy those civil and religious liber- 
ties, which they struggled in vain to obtain in Great Britain, hired some 
ships to carry them and their attendants to New England. By order 
of council, an embargo was laid on these when on the point of sailing ; 
and Charles, far from suspecting that the future revolutions in his 
kingdoms were to be excited and directed by persons in such an hum- 
ble sphere of life, forcibly detained the men destined to overturn his 
throne, and to terminal e his days by a violent death."* 

Towards the close of the seventeenth century, the alarm of 
depopulation, and trans-atlantic manufactures, from the re- 
moval of British subjects (o the colonies, had increased, and 
become the theme of much political speculation. Sir Josiah 
Child thought it necessary to investigate minutely the reality 
of the danger, and devoted to the question a consi- 
derable section of his work on Trade. Some few of his 
phrases will explain the state of the case. " Gentlemen of 
" no mean capacities are of opinion, that his majesty's plan- 
" tations abroad, have very much prejudiced this kingdom by 
" draining us of people.** 1 do not agree that our people in 
" England are in any considerable measure abated, by reason 
" of our foreign plantations. This, I know, is a controverted 
" point, and 1 do believe, that where there is one man of my 
" mind, there may be a thousand of the contrary," &c.t Child 
argued the question upon the true principles of political econo- 
my, and among other particular views gave the following : — 
" I do acknowledge, that the facility of getting to the plan- 
" tations, may cause some more to leave us than would do, 
" if they had none but foreign countries for refuge: but then, 
" if it be considered, that our plantations spending mostly our 
" English manufactures, and those of all sorts almost imagi- 
" nahir, in egregious quantities, and employing nearly two- 
" third.s of all our English shipping, do therein give a con- 
" stant sustenance to it, may be 200,000 persons here at 
" home; then I must needs conclude, upon tlie whole matter, 



* Fourth vol. History of America. 
r Chapter 10. 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 21 

" that we have not the fewer, but the more people in Eng- SECT. i. 
" land, by reason of our English plantations in America."* v.^"^,--^ 

Notwithstanding the complete refutation of the error by 
this and other liberal writers, lively alarms continued to 
recur. We find the political economists of England engaged, 
in 1756, and at later periods, before and after the American 
revolution, in warm controversies respecting the decline of the 
British population, from various causes, emigration included.! 
The government acted uniformly upon the received prejudice. 
The Lords of Trade, in the oflficial report of 1770, which I 
have quoted above, refer to the doctrine also quoted, of the 
governor of Georgia, in the following terms: — " And there is 
" one objection suggested by governor Wright, to the extension 
" of settlements in the interior country, which, we submit, 
" deserves your lordship's particular attention, viz. the en- 
" couragement that is thereby held out to the emigration of his 
" majesty's subjects; an argument which, in the present pe- 
" culiar situation of this kingdom, demands very serious con- 
" sideration, and has for some time past had so great weight 
" with this Board, that it has induced us to deny our concur- 
" rence to many proposals for grants of land, even in those 
" parts of the continent of America, ivhere, in other respects, 
" we ore of opinion, that it consists loith the true policy of the 
" kingdom to encourage settlements.'''' 

On the recognition of our independence, the panic respect- 
ing emigration returned, in England, with double violence. 
Nothing short of complete depopulation, from the tempta- 
tion? which the seeming natural advantages, or the designing 
legislation, of the new republic might offer to his majesty's 
liege subjects, was apprehended by the privy council of the 
home department. Lord Sheffield set himself at work to 
medicate the imagination of his countrymen, by depicting 
this land as one of multifarious wretchedness, and in al- 
most the last stage of atrophy. He represented emigration as 
the resource only of the culprit, and of those who had 

* Chapter 10. 

f To discourage it, the device was early employed, which has been 
so often resorted to, in relation to the United States. The following title 
of a work, which appeared in the mother country in 1753, will explain 
what I mean : " America dissected ; being a tnie and full account of 
all the American Colonies : shewing the intemperance of the climates ; 
badness of money ; danger from enemies ; and the danger to the souls 
of the poor people that remove thither, from the heresies that prevail 
there. By a Rev. Divine of the Church of England, Missionary to 
America, and D. D. — Published as a caution to unsteady people, ivho 
man be tempted to leave their native countri/." 



22 POLITICAL AN1> 

PART I. "^atle themselves the objects of contempt. " America would 
■_^^^-^^. prove the bane of all others;" " not above one emigrant in five, 
to that country, succeeded so as to settle a family;" " the bet- 
ter sort of ihem were begging about the streets of Philadelphia; 
Irishmen went there to become slaves to negroes,'''' &c.* Ex* 
pedients more effectual than this phantasmagoria, were adopt- 
ed by the government, particularly in 1794, in the shape of 
prohibitory laws. We had a remarkable instance of its feeling 
in 1817, in ihe act of parliament of that year, by which Bri- 
tish and foreign vessels were allowed to carry passengers from 
Great Britain and Ireland to the United States, in the propor- 
tion of one passenger only to every five tons, whereas the British 
vessels were permitted to convey them to other countries in 
the proportion of one for every two tons. 

The government of England would seem, at this time, to 
have relapsed into that particular " barbarism of our ances- 
tors," mentioned in the quotation from the European Settle- 
ments. The report of the parliamentary proceedings for May, 
1818, furnishes the following paragraph: — " In answer to a 
" question of a member from a manufacturing town, respect- 
" ing the increased progress of emigration, lord Castlereagh 
" replied, that it was the earnest object of government totermi- 
" nate this most mischievous evil, and that they were meditating 
" means for this purpose." I have had already occasion to 
notice some of the means which appear to have been me- 
ditated by bis lordship; but in looking at the British slatute 
book, and the repository of orders in council, I find it diffi- 
cult to conjecture what means could be contrived in the nature 
of penal regulation, in addition to those already provided, at 
different eras in the British history. The transportation of 
machinery is still punishable with death. On the 6th of Feb- 
ruary, 1817, lord Lauderdale made his lament in the House of 
Peers, that the law interfered (o prevent a poor artisan from 
leaving his country, and transferring his industry elsewhere; 
and that persons who attempted to export machinery were sub- 
jected to capital punishment. We have recently seen these 
"poor artisans" stealing their way at double expense, to the sea 
ports of France, in order to escape thence with impunity, to 
tlie only country which holds out to them the probability of a 
tolerable lot. The statute book and ministry lag behind even 
the Quarterly Review in illumination on this subject, if we 
may judge from this passage, of the number of that Jour- 
nal, for April, 1816: — " It is vain to imagine, that im- 

* See Observations on the Commerce of the United States, bv John 
Lord Sheffield, 1784.— p. 190, 96. 



MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 23 

" improvements in machinery can, for any length of time, be SECT. I. 
" confined to the country in which they are invented; and at- '^■^•'^''"^ 
" tempts to prevent manufacturers from emigrating, by penal 
" statutes, are not only oppressive, but inefficacious." 

The historians relate, that the acts of Charles I. restraining 
emigration, " increased the murmurs and complaints of the 
" people, and raised the cry of double persecution, to be 
" vexed at home, and not suffered to seek peace abroad.'''' This 
cry is again heard in England, after a lapse of nearly two cen- 
turies, and that jealousy which, in part, furnished the cause for 
it at the earliest period, has now a larger share in its produc- 
tion with a still greater certainty of disappointment. 

Nothing remains for the British government, but to pursue 
the course which Ovid has indicated as the reproach of the 
Argives among the nations of antiquity. 

— Prohibent discedere leges 
Paenaque mors posita est patriam mutare volenti. 

5. The reduction of the fortress of Louisbourg, in 1745, by 
the colonial troops, — the twenty-five thousand soldiers whom 
the colonies furnished and maintained in the war of 1755,— 
the four hundred privateers fitted out in their ports during the 
same period, to cruise against French property, — the large 
sums which they advanced, beyond their fair proportion, to 
the military chest, — the considerable aids in men and provi- 
sions, which they sent to the West Indies, — the important, 
principal share which they had in the overthrow of the French 
power in North America, and in the consequent, unexampled 
glory and aggrandizement of England, — these splendid efforts 
and services, of which I propose to speak particularly here- 
after, extorted annual thanks from the British parliament, 
and encomiums from the ministry: But they awakened no 
real gratitude, and won no solid marks of favour. The old 
jealousy was irritated; and a keener cupidity excited, by such 
supposed evidences of power and wealth: The design so long 
formed, of discharging upon the colonies, a part of the load of 
taxation under which Britain groaned, and of fastening a 
military yoke upon their necks, was only confirmed and ripen- 
ed, by their generous and excessive exertions, for the triumph 
of the mother country over her great rival. This effect was 
quickly visible in the stamp-act of 1764; and the scheniR of 
subjugation, though intermitted for a moment, was soon made 
evident by the revival of that act, and the train of desperate 
attciopts upon the liberties and spirit of the colonies, which 
the Declaration of Independence has engraven on the memory 
of everv American. 



24 

PART I. 



POLITICAL AND 



The views and dispositions of the British ministry, from the 
year 1763, until the sword was drawn, and during the struggle, 
belong more particularly to another section of this volume. 
They are, indeed, so well known, as scarcely to call for illus- 
tration from history. Ii is alike notorious and confessed, 
that the majority of the British nation partook in them, and 
finally consented to the recognition of American independence, 
not from any change of feelings, but from momentary exhaus- 
tion and discouragement. As the determination of the colo- 
nies to resort to arms, became apparent, and after the rupture 
ivas complete, the jealousy of dominion and monopoly, and 
the dread of future rivalry, heightened into rage, and no 
longer restrained by immediate interest, were vented in every 
variety of passionate and resentful expression. '■'■ I must 
" maintain," said a ministerial leader in the House of 
Lords, in the debate of the 26th October, 1775. on the 
king's speech, " that it would have been beiier that America 
" had never been known, than that a great consolidated em- 
"• pire should exist independent of Great Britain." Gover- 
nor Johnstone, and his colleagues of the opposition, cried shame 
upon " the ignoble jealousies daily uttered in Parliament 
against the Americans." — just as an orator of the House of 
Commons found himself, in 1812, compelled to exclaim 
and protest against " the perpetual jealousy of America."* 
One of the passages which I have selected from the Edin- 
burgh Review, to place at the head of this work, relates a 
fact, which may be said to speak volumes to the same pur- 
port. It were endless, and it is not within my present aim, 
to recount the demonstrations of this feeling, particularly as 
respects trade and navigation, given by England since her 
acknowledgment of our independence. Nor do I think 
it necessary to prove further her habitual temper, by 
quoting her conduct towards another of her dependencies — 
Ireland — whose strength, trade, and manufactures were so 
long and cruelly oppressed and crippled, while her domestic 
character and history were so grossly misrepresented and tra- 
duced. f 



* Mr. Brougham's Speecli on the Commerce and Manufactures of 
Great Britain. 

•j- See a victorious work recently published in this country, and enti- 
tled Vindidce Hibernicce, by Mathew Carey, Esq. — The sagacious and 
patriotic writer ought to pursue his well laid train of detection. The 
subject is not without attraction for Americans in general : and for 
Irishmen, and the descendants of Irishmen, it has the deepest interest 



25 



SECTION II. 



OF THE GENERAL CHARACTER AND MERITS OF THE 
COLONISTS. 

1. I HAVE said that England, is the particular mother coun- SECT, IL 
try, which might have been expected, to be most tender of the '■-^■v-^ 
feelings and character of her colonies, out of a due regard to 
justice, gratitude, and her own interests, as well as from the 
sympathies of blood, and the dictates of an enlarged philan- 
thropy. This is a proposition, from which no candid man, 
acquainted with the history of the American continent, is 
likely to dissent, and which can be fully sustained by drawing 
upon the English writers. It is my intention to quote prin- 
cipally their acknowledgments in favour of the origin and 
character, and, as regards Great Britain, of the services and 
dispositions, of the North American colonies. An illustration 
of these points by such testimony, will set in a stronger light 
the injustice and folly, of the sarcasms and contumelies, which 
have been directed against the Americans from the same 
quarter. 

" There are few states," says the Quarterly Review,* 
" whose origin is on the whole so respectable as the Ameri- 
" can — none whose history is sullied with so few crimes. 
" The Puritans who had fled into Holland to avoid intoler- 
" ance at home, carried with them English hearts. They 
" could not bear to think that their little community should 
" be absorbed and lost in a foreign nation: they had forsaken 
" their birth place and their family graves; but they loved 
" their country, and their mother tongue, and rather than their 
" children should become subjects of another state, and speak 
" another language, they exposed themselves to all the hard- 
" ships and dangers of colonizing in a savage land. JVo 
" people on earth may so justly pride themselves on their ances- 
" tors as the JSew Etiglanders.'''' 

Although it has been repeated with great complacency, in 

* 4th Number — Review of Holmes' Annals. 

Vol. I.— D 



26 CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PART I. the work just quoted, that the Adam and Eve of the cO' 
^-^^v-^ lonies came out of JSlwgate, yet it has been admitted, not 
only in England, but nearly throughout Europe, that the first 
settlers, and all the European generations of British America, 
were, in every respect, more worthy of esteem and encou- 
ragement, than those of the other parts of this continent. 
The Quarterly Review itself,* has drawn a comparison which 
is every way to my purpose. 

" The original settlers from England, in North America, were for 
the most part, an austere, frugal, and industrious people, — the hard- 
ships and privations of their early estAblishments, were not endured 
with the inspiring feelings of military adventurers, but borne with the 
patience of religious submission ; the purity of their morals, tinged 
with no small portion of the fanaticism which caused their emigration, 
kept them from promiscuous intercourse with the female Indians ; and 
hence an unmixed race was continued, among whom there was no dis- 
tinction of cast or complexion, to introduce a difference, or political 
contention. As no great inequality of property, the principal cause of 
political power, existed, there was no great inequality of education 
among those born in the country ; none were so destitute of know- 
ledge as the mass of the laborious in most countries of Europe." 

" Comparing the population of Spanish with that of British Ame- 
rica, we shall, at every step, be struck with the wonderful difference in 
origin, in progress, and in present situation. The conquerors from 
Spain, instead of the frugal, laborious, and moral description of our 
English settlers, partook of the ferocity and superstition of an earlier 
and less enlightened period. The warriors who had exterminated the 
Mahomedantsm of Granada, were readily induced to propagate their 
own religion by the swurd. As few or no women accompanied the 
first settlers of South America, their intercourse with native females 
produced a race of successors of a most anomalous character, and 
tliese, in a few generations, mixing with the slaves imported from 
Africa, still further increased the different classes, who, in process of 
time, more by the rules of society than by the influence of the laws, 
assumed a variety of ranks, according to their greater or less affinity to 
the white race. The education of the lower orders in South America, 
has been totally neglected." 

Ill the list of English authors who, although not exempt 
from gross errors of opinion, display a laborious study and 
discriminating knowledge of the formation and character 
of the settlements on this continent, I may safely class Mr. 
Brougham, distinguished also among the writers of the 
Edinburgh Review, and among the leading statesmen of the 
British Parliament. In his excellent work on Colonial Policy, 
he has advanced, and successfully maintained, doctrines con- 
cerning the thirteen British colonies, some of which deserve 
to be set apart for our hisJory. I shall avail myself of them 
as the occasion offers. To begin with the following passages. 



* July, 1817, Article on Spain and her Colonies. 



OF THE COLONISTS. '^ ' 

'' The first settlers of all the colonies, were men of irreproachable SECT. U. 
characters ; many of them fled from persecution ; others on account ^^^^^-^^ 
of an honourable poverty ; and all of them with their expectations 
limited to the prospect of a bare subsistence, in freedom and peace. 
All idea of wealth or pleasure was out of the question. A set of men 
more conscientious in their doings, or simple in their manners, never 
founded any commonwealth. It is indeed the peculiar glory of North 
America, that, with a very few exceptions, its empire was originally 
founded in charity and peace."* 

" The new emigrants who, at various times, continued to flock to 
this extensive country, as it became open and improved, were not of 
the same description as the first settlers. They were ofa various race, of 
different ranks, but chiefly needy men ; of different sects, but of no 
perceptible religion ; and of differenr nations, in which, however, the 
English greudy predominated. Some of them were persons of despe- 
rate fortunes and dissolute characters. No combination of circum- 
stances can be figured, to contribute more directly to the reformation 
of the new cultivatois' character and manners, than that which was 
found in the situation of the North American colonies. "| 

" The mixture of various population was. by the influence of those 
simple manners, which are formed by an agricultural life, soon blended 
into one nation of husbandmen, whose character has communicated 
itself, in a great degree, to the most profligate of those, whom com- 
pulsion or despair from time to time introduced. While the purity of 
manners was in this way preserved, that firmness of principles in re- 
ligion and politics was maintained, which had so eminently contributed 
to the establishment of colonies. Sentiments of freedom might find 
an asylum in America, when even in Switzerland it should no longer be 
lawful to think beyond the rules "f 

The " Account of the European Settlements in America,'^ 
published in London, in the middle of the last century, and 
ascribed to Edmund Burke, has always possessed a great 
and deserved authority. It holds the following language, 
besides much more in the same strain, to which I may here- 
after advert. 

" The Puritans established themselves at a place which they called 
New Pl3mouth. They were but few in number; they landed in a 
bad season ; and they were not at all supported but from their private 
funds. The winter was premature, and terribly cold. The country 
was covered with wood, and aff'orded very little for the refreshment of 
persons, sickly with such a voyage, or for the sustenance of an infant 
people. Near half of them perished by the scurvy, by want, and the 
severity of the cUmate ; but they who survived, were not dispirited 
with their losses, nor with the hardships they were still to endure; 
supported by the vigour which was then the character of the English- 
men, and by the satisfaction of finding themselves out of the reach of 
the spiritual arm, they reduced this savage country to yield them a to- 
lerable livelihood, and by degrees a comfortable subsistence. This lit- 
tle establishment was made in the year 1631. It was in the year 1629, 
that the colony began to flourish in such a manner, that they soon be- 
came a considerable people. By the close of the ensuing year they 
had built four towns, Salem, Dorchester, Charlestown, and Boston, 
which has since become the capital of New England." 

" Their exact and sober nvanners proved a substitute for a proper 
subordination, and regular form of government, which they had for 



* Book I. Section I. f Ibid. 



^ 



28 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 



PART 1. some time wanted, and the want of which, in such a country, had 
<.,**-v-i^^ otherwise been felt very severely. The people, by their being gene^ 
rally freeholders, and by tlieir form of government, acquired a very 
free, bold, and republican spirit. 

" The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in the space of about seventy 
years, from a beginning of a few hundreds of refugees and indigent 
men, has grown to be a numerous and flourisliing people, a people, 
. who from a perfect wilderness, have brought their territory to a state 
of great cultivation, and filled it with wealthy and populous towns ; 
and who, in the midst of a fierce and lawless race of men, have pre- 
served themselves with unarmed hands and passive principles, by the 
rules of moderation and justice, better than any other people has done 
by policy and arms." — Vol. ii. p 196. 

The " Political Annals of the United Colonies, by- 
George Chalmers," are remarkable for authentic and ample 
details, and were published in the course of our revolution- 
ary war, under the auspices of the British government. The 
author displays throughout, the design of discrediting the 
American cause, particularly the pretensions of New Eng- 
land. He is a witness whom I shall often produce, and whose 
evidence, when given in favour of the colonies, is entitled to 
especial weight, not only on account of his political aims 
and prejudices, but from the strength of his understanding, 
the nature of the records to which he had access, and the dili- 
gence of his researches. Of the settlement of New England 
he speaks thus: — 

" When New Plymouth consisted only of two hundred persons, of 
all ages and sexes, it repulsed its enemies, and secured its borders with 
a gallantry worthy of its parent country, because it stood alone in the 
desert, without the hope of aid." — p. 494 

" Though religious matters engaged much of tlie attention of the 
first planters in Massachusetts, they seem to have been extremely in- 
dustrious in temporal affairs. All tiieir laws had a natural tendency to 
exclude luxury, and to promote diligence. When tiie civil wars com- 
menced, they had already planted fifty towns and villages ; they had 
erected upwards of thirty churches, and ministers' houses; and they 
had improved their plantations to a high degree of cultivation." 

" At the same time that these colonists (the people of New England) 
very prude: tly preferred the blessings of peace, they were not afiaid 
of the disasters of war. They easily repelled an unprovoked attack 
of the neighbouring Indians, with a becoming bravery. They soon 
after made a peace with that people, which does equal honour to their 
. justice and good sense : and they long enjoyed all the blessings of a 
government conducted at once with prudence and vigour." — p. 89. 

" Notwithstanding the long train of public disputes with the mother 
country. New England flourished prodigious I}'. She promoted suc- 
cessfully the operations of agriculture, she augmented lier manufac- 
tures, and extended her commerce, and she acquired wealth and po- 
pulation in proportion to the greatness of all these ; because the rougli 
hand of oppression had not touched the labours of the inhabitants, or 
interrupted the freedom of their pursuits." — p. 416. 

2. The composition of the first settlements, particularly that 
of Virginia, was early, and continues to be, the theme of 



^j^# 



^^ 



OF THE COLONISTS. 29 

much raillery, and serious accusation. The coarse jest, sect. I[. 
which I have before noticed, has been received and treated ^-^-v-^ 
in England as an historical fact.* Yet, nothing is better 
established, than that the Puritans by whom New England 
was originally inhabited, and successively replenished, were, 
not only such, in .their moral character and domestic habiis, as 
they are described in the quotations I have made, but, for the 
most part, men of substance, and of a respectable rank in life. 
In the year 1630, ten ships were sent to Massachusetts from 
England, with several hundred passengers, many of whom, 
says Macpherson, in the second volume of his Annals of Com- 
merce, were " persons of considerable fashion.'''' The leader of 
the congregation of dissidents, who ibunded the new common- 
wealth at Plymouth, in 1620, is described, even by the ene- 
mies of his sect, " as a person of excellent parts, and of a 
most learned, polished, and modest spirit." — And it is im- 
possible to read the terse and touching language used by 
those virtuous exiles, in applying to their intolerant country- 
men for a patent, without acknowledging, that they must 
have been of a superior cast of mind in all respects. — 
" They were well weaned from the delicate milk of their 
" country, and inured to the difficulties of a strange land: 
" They were knit together in a strict and sacred bond, by vir- 
" tue of which they held themselves bound to take care of the 
" good of each other, and of the whole: It was not with them 
" as with other men, whom small things could discourage, or 
" small discontents cause to wish themselves at home again," 
&c. &c. 

It is accurately stated by Ramsay ,t that the first settlers of 
New England in general, had been educated at the English 
Universities, and were imbued with all the learning of the 
times; that not a few of (he early emigrant ministers possessed 
considerable erudition; and that numbers of clergymen of this 
description, came over nearly together, in consequence of the 
parliamentary act of uniformity, passed in 1662, when upwards 
of two thousand Puritan ministers were, in one day, ejected 

* " The Americans are the modern Jews, possessing- all the qualities 
of the ancient, under different masks. They pervade every country 
on the face of the earth, and with the phi-ases of liberty, morality, and 
religion, they deceive the most wary, and the most hypocritical. Mr. 
Fox has had ample experience of tiie tribes of Israel ; let him beware 
of the refined and complicated cunning of that race, ivhose Adam aiid 
Eve emigrated from J^eivgate." — Critical Review, third series, vol. iii. 
1806. 

" The Americans are a rjce of convicts, and ought to be thankful 
for any thing we allow them, short of hanging." — Dr. Johnson — ap. 
Boswell, vol. ii. 

t Colonial Civil History, p. 23.5. 



30 CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PART I. from their livings in England.* Tiie Massachusetts planta- 
^-^"v-^i.^ tion may be considered as the parent of all the other settle- 
ments in New England. There was no emigration from the 
mother country to any part of the continent northward of 
Maryland, except to Massachusetts, for more than fifty years 
from the birth of this colony.f 

Among the one hundred and five adventurers who sailed 
from England with Captain Newport, in 1607, and founded 
Jamestown, in Virginia, several officers of high family con- 
nexions, and of much personal distinction, are designated 
by the historians. The first accession of females, to the 
Virginia settlement, may be cited by the Virginian of the 
present day, without a blush for his lineage. " In order," 
says Chalmers, " to settle the minds of the colonists, and to 
induce them to make Virginia their place of residence and 
continuance, it was proposed to send thither one hundred 
maids, as wives for them: ninety girls, ' young and uncor- 
riipt,' were transported in the beginning of the year 1620; and 
sixty more, 'handsome and recommended for virtuous demean- 
our,' in the subsequent year.|" Robertson is still more particu- 
lar in noticing the respectability of these females. The descent 
from mothers of this character, is at least as reputable as from 
the " maids of honour" of the court of Charles II. — and the fa- 
thers who reclaimed the wilderness and built up a free state, 
transmitted a blood which might be deemed as pure and noble, 
as any that runs in the veins of the progeny of the debauched 
and venal parasites of that monarch. We are told by Robert- 
son, § that, in the time of the Commonwealth, many adherents 
to the royal party, and among these, some gentlemen of good 

* Hume notices tliis transaction, in his History, in the following terms: 
" However odious Vane and Lambert ■were to the Presbyterians, that 
]5artyhad no leisure to rejoice at their condemnation. Tlie fatal St. 
Bartholomew approached, the day, when the clergy were obliged by 
the late law, either to relinquish their livings, or to sign the articles re- 
quired of them, declaring their assent to ever}' thing contained in the 
Book of Common Prayer, &c. A combination had been entered into 
by the more zealous of the Presbyterian ecclesiastics, to refuse the 
subscription; in liopes tliat the bishops would not dare at once to expel 
so great a number of the most popular preachers. The king, himself, 
by his irresolute conduct, contriliuted, eitlier from design or accident, 
to increase this opinion. Above all, the terms of subscription had been 
made veiT strict and rigid, on purpose to disgust all tlie ze.alous and 
scrupulous among the Presbyterians, and deprive them of tiieir livings. 
About two tliousand of the clergy in one day relinquished their cures ; 
unii, to the ffreat asiomshinent of t/ie court, sacrificed their interest to tjtei. 
religions teiiels." — Chapter 63. 

f Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts — Preface. 

± Page 46. 

§ History of America, vol. iv. 



OP THE COLONISTS. 



31 



families, in order to avoid danger and oppression, to which they SECT. II. 
were exposed in England, or in hopes of repairing their ruined ^-^-v-^^ 
fortunes, resorted to Virginia. Lord Clarendon bears testi- 
mony to this fact in his History of the Rebellion. " Out of 
confidence in Sir William Berkeley, the governor of Virginia, 
who had industriously invited many gentlemen and olhers 
thither, as to a place of security, which he could defend against 
any attempt, and where they might live plentifully, many 
persons of condition, and good officers in the war, had trans- 
ported themselves with all the estate they had been able to 
preserve."* Chalmers may be quoted to a similar purport, 
and to the general character of the early Virginians. " The 
" instructions of Charles I. gave large tracts of land to indi- 
" viduals, men of consideration and wealth, who roused by 
" religion, or ambition, or caprice, removed to Virginia, and 
" the population of that colony had increased to about twenty 
" thousand souls at the commencement of the civil wars." — 
p. 125. 

" The Virginians being animated by timely supplies from 
" England, displayed a vigor in design and action, which men, 
" when left to themselves amid dangers, never fail to exert. 
" They rejected the timid counsels of those, who advised them 
" to abandon their settlements, and retire to the eastern shore 
" of the Chesapeake. They not only resisted the attacks of 
" their implacable enemies, but, with the accustomed bravery 
" of Englishmen, pursued them into their fastnesses. And 
" now, for the first time, the aborigines receded from the 
" rivers, and from the plantations around; leaving their op- 
" ponents in possession of the territories that their swords had 
" won."— p. 63. 

If we turn to Maryland, we may appeal to the same author 
with equal confidence. 

" The first emigration to Maryland, consisting' of about two hundretl 
gentlemen of considerable fortune and rank, with their adherents, wlio 
were composed chiefiv of Roman Catholics, sailed from England in 
November, 1632." 

" The Roman Catholics, unhappy in their native land, and desirous 
of a peaceful asylum in Maryland, emigrated in considerable numbers. 
Lord Baltimore laid the foundation of his province upon the broad 
basis of security to property, and of freedom in religion ; granting in 
absolute fee fifty acres of land to every emigrant ; establishing Chris- 
tianity agreeably to the old common law, of whic'i it is a part, without 
allowing pre-eminence to any particular sect." — p. 208. 

" In order chiefly to procure the assent of the freemen of Maryland 
to a body of laws which the proprietary had transmitted, Calvert, the 

* Vol. iii. p. 706. 



32 



CHARACTER AND MERITS 



PART I. governor, called anew assembly in 1637-8. But, rejecting these with 
v^n- -^_- a beconiing^ spirit, they prepared a collection of regulations, which de- 
monstrate equally their good sense and the state of their affairs." — 
p. 211. 

" The assembly of Maryland endeavoured, with a laudable anxiety, 
to preserve the peace of the church ; and, though composed chiefly 
of Roman Catholics, it adopted that measure, which could alone prove 
absolutely successful. The act which it passed, ' concerning reli- 
gion,' recited, 'that the enforcement of the conscience had been of 
dangerous consequence in those countries wherein it had been prac- 
tised.' And it enacted, that no persons believing in Jesus Chnst shall be 
molested in respect of their religion, or in the free exercise thereof or be 
compelled to the belief or exercise of any other religion, against their 
consent ; so that they be not unfaithful to the proprietary, or conspire 
not against the civil government : that persons molesting any other in 
respect of his religious tenets, shall pay treble damuijes to the party 
aggrieved, and twenty shilluigs to the proprietary : That those re- 
proaching any wiih opprobrious naines of religious distinction, shall forfeit 
ten shiUings to the persons injured." — p. 218 

Maryland derived a part of her population from the other 
provinces. The Puritans persecuted by the established church 
in Virginia, the Qurikers oppressed by the synod of Massa- 
chusetts, and the Duich expelled from Delaware, sought and 
found a generous ])rotection, and entire freedom of religious 
worship, in the Roman Catholic colony. New York was first set- 
tled by the Dui.ch, at the time when they had just shaken off 
the yoke of Spain; when they displayed national energies and 
virtues of Un; highest order, and pursued a more liberal and 
enlightened policy, with respect to civil liberty, religion, and 
trade, than any other people of Europe. The emigrants from 
Holland to North America, brought with them, the charac- 
teristic industry and sobriety, the tolerant spirit and sound eco- 
nomics, of the commercial republic. The original population of 
New Jersey was composed of Swedes and Hollanders, and of 
emigrants from the northern colonies: That of Pennsylvania 
needs not be celebrated by a reference to the parent state. The 
commonwealth, which the wise and humane associates of 
Penn, the laborious, frugal, and orderly Germans, and the 
intelligent, active, and generous Irish, formed, and brought to 
beauty and solidity, in so short a time, is a monument, elo- 
quent enough in itself; a creation, upon which no European 
writer has looked steadily, without bursting into expressions 
of admiration. Even the austere loyalty of Chalmers, is 
relaxed by it, and the following emphatic testimony extorted 
from his convictions. 

*• As a supplement to the frame of government for Pennsylvania, 
there was published a body of * laws agreed upon in England by 
the Adventurers,' which was intended afiAgreat charter. And it does 
great honour to their wisdom as statesmen, to their morals as men, 
to their spirit as colonists. A plantation reared on such a seed-plot, 



OP THE COLONISTS. 'i^ 

could not fail to grow up with rapidity, to advance fast to maturity, to SECT II. 
attract the notice of the world." — p. 643. -_^ _ -^^ ■ 

" The numerous laws, which weie enacted at the first settlement of 
Pennsylvania, which do so much honour to its good sense, display the 
principles of the people ; these legislative regulations kept them alive 
long after the original spirit began to droop and expire. Had Penn- 
sylvania been less blessed by nature, she must have become flourishing 
and great, because it was a principle of her great charter, 'that children 
should be taught some useful trade, to the end that none may be idle, 
but the poor may work to live, and the rich, if they become poor, may 
not want.' That country must become commercial, which compels 
factors, wronging their employers, to make satisfaction, and one-third 
over; which subjects not only the goods but the lands of the debtor, 
to the payment of debts ; because it is the credit given by all to all, that 
forms the essence of traffic. We ought naturally to expect great in- 
ternal order when a fundamental law declares, that every thing ' which 
excites the people to rudeness, cruelty, and irreligion, shall be dis- 
couraged and severely punished.' And religious controversy could'not 
disturb her repose, when none, acknowledging one God, and living 
peaceably in society, could be molested for his opinions or his practice, 
or compelled to frequent and maintain any ministry whatsoever. To 
the regulations which were thus established as fundamentals, must 
chiefly be attributed the rapid improvement of this colony, the spirit 
of diligence, order and economy, for which the Pennsylvanians have 
been at all times so celebrated." — p. 643. 

Swedes and Fins, a simple and virtuous race of men, 
opened the soil of Delaware, and were joined bj the Dutch, 
and by emigrants of different nations, from the neighbouring 
provinces. New England, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, gave 
the first inhabitants to the Carolinas. In consequence of the 
revocation of the edict of Nantz, a multitude of French Pro- 
testants of the most respectable families, established them- 
selves in South Carolina. These were followed, at different in- 
tervals, by numbers of their own countrymen, and of Germans 
and Swiss, professing the same religious tenets. The character 
of the French settlers has been recently pourtrayed by a young 
American, in a language which I am proud to quote, as a 
specimen of what is produced in those literary societies, 
whose existence even, the European critics would not, in all 
likelihood, condescend to notice. 

" History derives more than half its value from the moral parallels 
and contrasts, which it suggests. It is a singular coincidence of this 
sort, that between the years 1682 and 16S8, at the very time that Wil- 
liam Penn, the gentlest and purest of all rulers, was rendering his 
name for ever illustrious, by establishing, in America, a refuge for the 
wretched and oppressed of the whole earili ; Louis XIV., one of the 
most gorgeous and heartless of sovereigns, was delivering up three 
hundred thousand families of his Protestant subjects to the atrocious 
tyranny of the fanatical Le Tellier, and llie sanguinary Louvois ; and 
by his ambition of universal empii'e abroad, and his bigotry and osten- 
tation at home, was preparing for France those calamities which have 
since fallen upon her. The Huguenots were the most moral, industri- 
ous, and intelligent part of the French population, and when they wcvp 

Vol. I.— E 



34 CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PART 1. expelled from their native country, tliey enriched all Europe with the 
, ^^^^.^^^j commerce ancl arts of France. Many of the more enterprising of them, 
finding themselves shut out, by the narrow policy of the French court 
from Louisiana, where they had proposed to found a colony, turned 
their course to New York and to South Carolina, where they soon 
melted into the mass of the poptdation. 

"Certainly, we cannot wish to see perpetuated among us the old 
Asiatic and European notions of indelible hereditary excellence ; and 
equally wild are those theories of a fantastical philosophy, which would 
resolre all the intellectual and moral qualities of man into accidental 
physical causes. But surely there is a point at which good feeling 
and sound philosophy can meet, and agree in ascribing the best parts 
of our character to the moral influence of a virtuous and intelligent 
ancestry. 

" Considering the subject in this light, we may well look back, with 
pride, to our Huguenot forefathers. The modern historians of France 
have rarely done them full justice. The decline which the loss of their 
industry and arts caused in the commerce of their own country, and 
the sudden increase of wealth and power which England and Holland 
derived from them, are sufficient proofs that their general character 
was such as I have described. Nor are they to be regarded solely as 
prosperous merchants, and laborious and frugal artisans. 

"The French character never appeared with more true lustre than 
it did in the elder protestants. Without stopping to expatiate in the 
praise of their divines and scholars, Calvin, Beza, Salmasius, and the 
younger Scaliger; Claude, Jurieu, Amylraut, and Saurin, nor on those 
of Sully, the brave, the wise, the incorruptible, the patriotic; I shall 
only observe, ihat though his own countrymen have been negligent of 
his glory, and choose to rest the fame of French chivalry on their Du- 
nois, their Bayard, tlicir Du Guescelin and their Crillon, we may search 
their history in vain for a parallel to that beautiful union of the intrepid 
soldier with the profound scholar, of the adroit politician with the man 
of unbending principle, of the rigid moralist and the accomplished gen- 
tleman, which is to be found in the life of the Huguenot chief, Mornai 
Du Plessis. 

"Many of those who emigrated to this country, after the revocation 
of the edict of Nantes, were the companions, the sons, or the disciples 
of these men, and they brouglit hither a most valuable accession of in- 
telligence, knowledge, and enterprise."* ' 

A considerable number of Palatines rivalling the Dutch in 
habits of indusiry and order, settled in North Carolina, in the 
beginning of the eighteenth century. The memorable ravages 
of war committed at that period in the countries of the 
Rhine, drove into England seven thousand of the ruined inha- 
bitants, Palatines and Suabians. Three thousand of them 
were transjjorted to New York, and a part of these found their 
way into the other provinces. It seems incredible, yet is matter 
of parliamentary record, that the expense incurred for their 
transportation, — not more beneficial to tjiem, than to the co- 
lonies whieli received them — drew complaints from the British 
House of Conmions. A body styling itself the citadel of 

* An Anniversary Discourse delivered before the New York Histori- 
: •! ""(^citity, Deccniber 7, 1S18, by Gulian C. Verplank, Esq. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 35 

Protestantism, and the refuge of the victims of Catholic bigot- sect. ii. 
ry, could, nevertheless, in a formal representation to Queen ^.^^y-*^ 
Anne, discourse querimoniously of" the squandering away great 
" sums upon the Palatines, a useless people, a mixture of all 
" religions, and dangerous to the constitution,"— with the de- 
claration besides, that " it held those who advised the bringing 
" them over to England, as enemies to the queen and king- 
" dom." How different the conduct of the unpretending 
Quakers of Pennsylvania, by whom the portion of the wretch- 
ed exiles that took shelter there, was — not defamed or stinted 
but, according to an English writer, most kindly entertained 
and assisted!* 

The poverty and humble condition of a part of the emigrants 
to the middle and southern provinces, constitute the heaviest 
reproach to which they are liable, if we except, indeed, the cir- 
cumstance, — notable in the case of Georgia particularly — of so 
many of them being Scotchmen; which forms, no doubt, a 
just subject of ridicule for the wits of Edinburgh. The gene- 
ral estimation in which our emigrant ancestors should be held, 
is proclaimed in the rapid growth, strength, order, and felicity 
of the communities, which they added to the British empire. 
The mighty difficulties which they vanquished — the conquests 
which they made over nature, and over a savage enemy greatly 
exceeding them in numbers and the means of annoyancef — 
the freedom and liberality of their institutions, and the inte- 
grity in which those institutions were preserved — the solicitude 
and success with which they laboured to render universal 
among them an acquaintance with the rudiments of learning 
— all these points which I propose to enlarge upon in the 
subsequent pages — demonstrate the noblest qualities^; enter- 
prize, industry, perseverance, valour, sagacity, humane, and 
broad views, setting them plainly above the mass of their co- 
temporaries in Europe. 

The white population of Georgia consisted of only fifty 
thousand souls in the year 1775, and but forty-five years had 
then elapsed since the foundation of the colony: yet, though so 
weak, and though vulnerable and sure of being assailed, on 
every side, she joined, in that year, the confederacy against the 
mother country. The character of her founder, general Ogle- 
thorpe, — who lived to see her independence and sovereignty 
acknowledged — was such as to have hallowed that of the 
exiles who seconded his plans of civil government, and fought 

■* Macpherson's Annals of Commei-ce, vol. iii. p. 6. 
t See Note A. 



36 CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PART I. under his banners against the Indians and Spaniards. The 
'^-^"'^'''^^ Oglethorpes, the Robinsons, the Penns, the Roger Williams', 
the Smiths, the Calverts, may be placed at the head of the 
worthies to whom Adam Smith alludes, in the following pas- 
sage of the fourth book of his Wealth of Nations. " It was 
" not the wisdom and policy, but the disorder and injustice of 
" the European governments, which peopled and cultivated 
" America. In what way, then, has the policy of Europe 
" contributed either to the first establishment, or to the pre- 
" sent grandeur of the colonies of America? In one way, and 
" in one way only, it has contributed a good deal. Magna 
" virum mater! It bred and formed the men who were capa- 
" ble of atchieving such great actions, and of laying the founda- 
" tion of so great an empire; and there is no other quarter of the 
" world, of which the policy is capable of forming, or ever has 
" actually and in fact, formed, such men. The colonies owe 
" to Europe the education and great views of their active and 
" enterprising founders, and some of the greatest and most 
'• important of them, so far as concerns their internal govern- 
" ment, owe to it scarce any thing else." 

3. The occasional exportation to the plantations, of those 
whom the government of England chose to denominate con- 
victs, vagrants, and " dissolute persons," is the most plausible 
ground for the language of contempt and derision, which has 
been so commonly indulged, with respect to the original stock 
- of these States. The fact taken in the broad and unqualified 
manner in which it is usually announced, would exalt but 
little the generosity and justice of the mother country, if the 
character of the first and voluntary settlers be admitted to have 
been such as it appears in the foregoing pages, upon the testi- 
mony of the British writers. An impartial investigation of this 
subject gives it, however, a different complexion from that 
which it commonly wears.* 

Franklin calculated in 1751,t that there were then one mil- 
lion or upwards of English souls in North America, and that 
scarce eighty thousand had been brought over sea. Among this 
number ofemigrants, not one-eighth was of the description men- 
tioned above, and it is certain, from the uniform acknowledg- 
ment of history, that those who were, did not adulterate, but 
imbibed, themselves, in a great degree, the character of their 
predecessors. Numbers became, in process of time, laborious 
and orderly citizens; anxious and exemplary fathers of families. 

* Discourse on Trade, chap. x. f Essay on Populatiou. 



OF THE COLOiNIISTS. 37 

I have quoted in p. 27 some remarks made by Mr. Brougham sect. II. 

in his "Colonial Policy," which bear upon the true theory of v,-^-v-^^ 

this point; and I may add here from the same work, " that if 

" the convicts in the colony of New Holland, though sur- 

" rounded on the voyage, and in the settlement, by the com- 

" panions of their iniquities, have, in a great degree, been re- 

" claimed, by the mere change of scene, what might not be 

" expected from such a change as that which the transported 

" persons experienced on arriving in America.'"'* 

It is to be noted, that the real convicts were received by 
the colonists not as companions, but as servants; and if the 
circumstance of their comparative paucity did not render ab- 
surd a general reproach upon our descent, it is difficult to 
conceive why any generation in Great Britain should not be 
stigmatized in its origin, on account of the much more consi- 
derable proportion of " dangerous rogues," who remained at 
home. Chalmers tells us, that " it is to James I. that the 
" British nation and the colonists owe the policy whether sa- 
" lutary or baneful, of sending convicts to the plantations." — 
The excuse which this writer offers for the British nation 
would seem fitted to operate as efficaciously in favour of the 
colonies: — "The good sense of those days justly considered 
" that their labour would be more beneficial in an infant set- 
" tlement, which had an immense wilderness to cultivate, than 
" their vices could possibly be pernicious."! 

But there are other considerations, of a nature, to render a 
Briton cautious, how he attempts to handle this topic offensive- 
ly. When we find the term convicts used, in reference to the 
persons transported, during three-fourths of the seventeenth 
century, we are not to understand it in the opprobious sense 
in which it is generally received, and was tyrannically meant 
to be employed. The several parties who alternately gained 
the ascendency in the furious struggles of that era, in Eng- 
land, oppressed and exiled, under this appellation, the objects 
of their political resentment, or their religious intolerance. 
Chalmers even, confesses, that the only law which, in the 
time of James I. justified the infliction of expulsion, unknown 
to the common law, was the statute of Elizabeth, which en- 
acted that " dangerous rogues might be banished out of the 
" realms;" and he adds that it is probable the obnoxious men 
were transported agreeably to the genius of the administration 
of the time — by prerogative. 

The extent of the guilty abuse and cruel hardship to which 

* Book I. Sect. I, f Chap. iii. Political Annals. 



38 CHAKACTER AM) MLRllS 

PART I. this assumption of power led, can be readily imagined, from 
"^i^-^v-^iw^ the facility of sweeping oft' the obnoxious and distressed, under 
the denomination of vagrants, or " dangerous rogues." It may 
be worlh while, in order to illustrate the point further, to refer 
to Sir Josiah Child's account of the peopling of the planta- 
tions, which, from its early date, carries with it a particular au- 
thority, and which, at the same time, furnishes a curious picture 
of the miserable state of things in England at the epoch in 
question. He relates, in the first instance,* that Virginia and 
Barbadoes were partly settled by a loose, vagrant people, who 
must, if there had been no English j)1antations, have starved at 
home, or " else have sold themselves for soldiers, to be knocked 
" on the head, or starved in the quarrels of England's neigh- 
" hours, as many thousands of brave Englishmen were, in the 
" Low Countries, as also in the wars of Germany, France, 
" and Sweden; or else, if they could by begging or otherwise 
" arrive to the stock of two shillings and six pence, to waft 
" them over to Holland, become servants, where none are 
" refused." Then come the following passages: — 

" But the principal growth and increase of the aforesaid plantations 
of Virginia and Barbadoes happened in, or immediately after, our late 
civil wars, when the worsted party, by the fate of war, being deprived 
of their estates, and having some of them never been bred to labour, 
and others made unfit for it, by the lazy habit of a soldier's life ; there 
wanting means to maiiitain them all abroad witli his majesty, many of 
them betook themselves to the aforesaid plantations, aiid great num- 
bers of Scots soldiers, of his majesty's army, after Worcester fight, 
were, by the then prevailing powers, voluntarily sent thither." 
' " Another great swarm, or accession of new inhabitants to the afore- 
said plantations, as also to New England, Jamaica, and all others his 
majesty's plantations in tlie AVest Indies, ensued upon his majesty's 
restoration, when the former prevailing party being, by a divine band 
of Providence, brought under, the army disbanded, many officers dis- 
placed, and all the new purchasers of public titles, dispossessed of their 
pretended lands, estates, &.C. many became impoverished, and destitute 
of employment ; and, therefore, such as could find no way of living at 
home, and some who feared the re-establishment of the ecclesiastical 
laws, under wbich they could not live, were forced to transport them- 
selves, or sell themselves for a few years, to be transported by others to the 
foreign English plantations. **And some were of those people called 
Quakers, banished for meeting on pretence of religious worship." 

In noticing the prevalence of the practice of transportation, 
after the Restoration, Chalmers remarks, that it was probably 
upon the authority of the statute which empowered the king 
to send Quakers to the colonies. f This is the statute 13, 14, 
ch. ii. c. 1, "for preventing the dangers that may arise by 
" certain persons called Quakers, and others refusing to take' 



Discourse on Trade, chap. x. f Chap. xv. Annals. 



OP THE COLONISTS. 



39 



" the lawful oaths.'''' It enacted, that it should be lawful for SECT. ii. 
his majesty, to cause such refractory pel-sons to be transported v.^~v-^>^ 
beyond the seas. We are informed by Hume,* that Cromwell 
caused the royalists who engaged in conspiracies against his 
government, to be sold for slaves and transported. On the 
suppression of Monmouth's rebellion against James II., those 
of his followers who escaped judicial massacre, were treated 
in the same way. Chalmers furnishes, from the records of 
the plantation office in London, a letter from James to the 
governor of Virginia, which states, that the crown " had been 
" graciously pleased to extend its mercy to many rebellious 
" subjects who had taken up arms against it; by ordering their 
" transportation to the plantations;" and which directs the go- 
vernor to propose a bill to the assembly for preventing the 
convicts, those rebellious subjects, from redeeming themselves 
by money, or otherwise, until the expiration of ten years at 
least. The assembly refused to co-operate in this scheme of 
royal vengeance, and the inhabitants of Virginia received the 
victims with the sympathy due to their situation. 

Either from a sense of the futility of expostulation, or 
from the advantage which the labour of the convicts pro- 
mised, or from a knowledge of the fact which must now be 
clear to all, that most of the persons transported were but the 
victims of misfortune, and of (he tyranny or bigotry of their 
countrymen, the colonists did not at first condemn, or remon- 
strate against, the system of transportation. But it had not 
been pursued long after the Restoration, before open opposition 
was made. Maryland ventured even to legislate adversely, 
and drew upon herself, in consequence, the reprobation of the 
crown lawyers, who contended that every law of the colonial 
legislature, passed to restrain a measure that was allowed and 
encouraged by acts of parliament, was void ab initio, " Whe- 
" ther," says Chalmers, " from the too great numbers brought 
" into Maryland, or from an apprehension that their vices 
" might contaminate the morals of the colonists, the introduc- 
" tion of criminals was then deemed an inconvenience: and a 
' law was passed ' against the importation of convicted per- 
" sons into the province,' which was continued at different 
" times, till towards the beginning of the reign of Anne."t 

The persistance of the British government in the practice 
of transporting real malefactors, after the colonies had grown 
into considerable commonwealths, and signalized themselves 
by the noblest qualities and most valuable services, was an 

" History, chap. Ixi. r Book T. cliap. xv. 



40 CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PART I. indignih', of which the impolicy must be as obvious, as the 
^.-i'-'N'-^ arrogance and ingratitude. If it could not extinguish their 
glowing loyalty, it was, however, deeply felt and resented. 
In Franklin's piece on the causes of the American discontents 
before 1768, he includes it in the list of their grievances, and 
employs this strong language. " Added to the evils which I 
" have enumerated, the Americans remembered the act au- 
" thorising the most cruel insult perhaps ever offered by one 
" people to another, that of emptying the English gaols into 
" their settlements. Scotland, too, has within these two years 
" (in 1766) obtained (he privilege it had not before, of send- 
" ing its rogues and villains to the plantations." When the 
illustrious patriot expostulated, by the direction of his consti- 
tuents, with the British minister on this head, he was told that 
England must be relieved of her moral putrefaction — and his 
laconic reply adumbrates the nature of the case. " What 
" would you say, if, upon the same principle, we sent you our 
" rattle-snakes." Fortunately, there was a virtue in the cha- 
racter and condition of the despised and outraged colonists, 
which secured them from the infection, and even converted the 
virus into wholesome nutriment for the state. 

4. The love of liberty and independence is the trait which, 
if any, would seem to assure to a people, the admiration and 
applause of an Englishman, pursuant to his own boasted 
principles and perpetual claims. It is impossible to deny this 
merit to the North American colonists, even in the superla- 
tive degree; whatever doubts may be affected in relation to 
the other high titles asserted for them by their descendants. 
Hume, in noticing the commencement of their establishments, 
remarks that " the spirit of independency which was then 
" reviving in England, shone forth in America in its full lustre, 
" and received newaccession of force from the aspiring charac- 
" ter of those who, being discontented with the established 
" church and monarchy, had sought for freedom amidst those 
" savage deserts."* To the early settlers, as well as to their 
posterity of 1775, the well known language of Mr. Burke, 
was strictly applicable. " In the character of the Americans, 
" a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks 
" and distinguishes the whole. This fierce spirit of liberty, is 
" stronger in the English colonies than in any other people of 
" the earth."* 



* Appendix to the reign of James I. 

f Speech on Conciliation with the colonies. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 41 

The first planters in Virginia called for arrangements of the sect. Ii. 
most liberal character, and within fourteen years from the ^-^^^-^^^ 
settlement, that constitution by which they became freemen 
and citizens, was fixed in its genius and permanent forms.* 
Freedom was the errand of the colonists of Plymouth and 
Massachusetts; and these, so properly styled, rc]>tt/y/ican dis- 
senters^ framed accordingly, their body politic and social, upon 
principles of perfect equality. The complete organization of a 
republic in the representative form, within the same term after 
the landing at Plymouth, as (hat just mentioned in the case 
of Virginia, under circumstances so new and critical, — in defi- 
ance of the adverse habits, spirit, and scheme of rule, which 
predominated in the mother country, — has drawn forth expres- 
sions of wonder and homage from some of the more liberal 
of the British historians. 

As the Puritans spread themselves over New England, they 
gave to the distinct communities which they established, con- 
stitutions still more democratical; and that, although bold 
and elevated in their plans, they were not visionary or rash, 
is proved by the duration and happy effects of those constitu- 
tions. After relating, that on the 14th January, 1639, all the 
free planters upon Connecticut river, convened at Hartford, 
formed a system of government, and after giving the substance 
of that system, the faithful historian of Connecticut, Trum- 
bull, makes the following remarks, Avhich all who read his 
work must feel to be just. "With such wisdom did our 
venerable ancestors provide for the freedom and liberties of 
themselves and their posterity. Thus happily did they guard 
against every encroachment on the rights of the subject. This, 
probably, is one of the most free and happy constitutions of 
civil government which has ever been formed. The forma- 
tion of it at so early a period, when the light of liberty was 
wholly darkened in most parts of the earth, and the rights of 
men were so little understood in others, docs great honour to 
their ability, integrity, and love of mankind. To posterity, 
indeed, it exhibited a most benevolent regard. It has con- 
tinued with little alteration, to the present time, (1814). The 
happy consequences of it, which, for more than a century and 
an half, the people of Connecticut have experienced, are 
beyond description."! 

* " Thus early," says Stith, " was the assembly of the colony 
studious and careful to establish our liberties ; and we had here, in the 
eighth and ninth articles of its laws, a Pelition of Jiiglit passed, above 
four years, before that matter was indubitably settled and explained in 
England." — History of Yirsrinia, book 5. 

t Vol. i. c. 6. 

Vol. I.— F 



42 CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PART 1. Chalmers, who wrote to prove the uniform " self-suffi- 
^-^"v-^»r^ ciency, and rebellious dispositions of New England" repre- 
sents with much chiding and lamenting, how " the first set- 
tlers of New Haven erected a system suitable indeed to 
their own views, but aiiogether independent on the sove- 
reign state;" and how " ihere was established, in Rhode 
Island and Connecticut, a mere democracy or rule of the peo- 
ple; every power, as well deliberative as active, being invested 
in the freemen of the corporation, or their delegates, and the 
supreme executive of the empire, by an inattention little ho- 
nourable to the English statesman of those days, being wholly 
excluded."* Hutchinson, in his History of Massachusetts, 
traces, in a summary and striking manner, the operations of 
the spirit which gives so much umbrage to Chalmers. " It is 
" observable, all the colonies, before the reign of king Charles 
" the Second, Maryland excepted, settled a model of govern- 
" ment for themselves. Virginia had been distracted under the 
" government of presidents and governors, with councils, in 
" whose nomination or removal the people had no voice, un- 
" til in the year 1620, a house of burgesses broke out in the 
" colony, neither the king, nor the grand council at home, 
" having given any powers or directions for it. The governor 
" and assistants of Massachusetts, at first intended to rule the 
" people, and, as I have observed, obtained their consent for 
" it; but this lasted two or three years only; and, although there 
'• is no colour for it in the charter, yet a House of Deputies 
••^ appeared suddenly^ in 1634, to the surprise of their magis- 
" trates, and the disappointment of their schemes for power. 
" Connecticut soon after followed the plan of Massachusetts. 
" New Haven, although the people had the highest rever- 
" ence for their leaders, and for near thirty years, in judicial 
" proceeding, submitted to their magistracy (it must, how- 
" ever, be remembered, that it was annually elected,) without 
" a jury, yet in matters of legislation, the people, from the 
" beginning, would have their share by their representatives. 
" New Hampshire combined together under the same form as 
" Massachusetts. Lord Say tempted the principal men of 
" Massachusetts to make themselves and their heirs nobles 
" and absolute governors of a new colony, but under this 
" plan, they could find no people to follow them."t 

In Maryland and Pennsylvania, the first assemblies esta- 
blished a popular representation, and, in all their political 

* Paf?e 290, 294, Annals. 
r Vj!..ii.p, 29ii. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 43 

regulations, proceeded upon broad views of civil freedom. SECT. ii. 
The same remark may be extended to the Carolinas,* and to ^^^^^v^i^ 
New York, The inhabitants of this province wrested from 
the patentee, the Duke of York, in 1681, privileges of self 
government similar to those assumed in the other plantations. 
No one of the proprietaries was able to establish, without 
modification, the constitution which he framed for his grant; 
all were compelled, in the end, to acquiesce in the more 
liberal order of things required by the assemblies of the peo- 
ple. In some of the provinces, no time was lost in abolishing 
primogeniture and entail, which Adam Smith so justly styles, 
" the two most unjust and unwise regulations that exist " 

The first emigrants to Virginia, New England, Maryland, 
and Pennsylvania, would seem to have been universally, 
in their respective eras, much in advance of those whom they 
left at home, as regards not only private morals, but the love 
and intelligence of freedom. Whoever has studied the history 
of England, with the due attention to particular facts, must 
be convinced, that until the revolution of 1668, the theory of 
liberty was, except in the case of a few illustrious individuals, 
as little understood as practised; and in fact, we may descend 
much lower, without being greatly edified on this head. In 
the time of James I. the epoch of Virginia and New England 
— a slavish reverence of monarchy was nearly universal, and 
the system of administration altogether absolute and arbitrary. 
Of the social state, we may judge from the representations of 
Hume, who tells us, that " high pride of family then prevailed; 
that it was by dignity and stateliness of behaviour, that the 
gentry and nobility distinguished themselves from the com- 
mon people;" and that, " much ceremony took place in the 
common intercourse of life, and little familiarity was in- 
dulged by the great." The concurrence of the colonists in 
the same political maxims and arrangements, the reverse of 
what prevailed in England, and throughout Europe, — the 
contentment and tranquillity which reigned among them, as 
to political doctrines, and forms of government, particularly 
in New England, are strikingly contrasted with the sanguinary 
and unprincipled struggles in the mother country; with that 
•' continued fever in the domestic administration," and those 
" furious convulsions and disorders" which are so eloquently 
painted by Hume. The political distractions extant in 
the colonial history, were occasioned, almost universally, by 
the ambition and avarice of the proprietaries, or the violence 

* See Note B. 



44 CHARACTEK AND MERITS 

PART I. attempted upon the charters by the English government and 
^-'"^v-^^ its representatives in America. 

5. The preceding survey makes it sufficiently plain that no 
credit can, in strictness, be allowed to England for the insti- 
tutions which the colonists framed, themselves, in the wilder- 
ness. Nor is any fairly due to her, for the liberal purport of 
the charters which they received. All the original charters, 
except that of Georgia, were granted between the years 1603 
and 1688. It would be setting at defiance both history and 
reason, to ascribe to the house of Stuart, or to the Protectorate, 
any fond or liberal dispositions in favour of the cause of free- 
dom in America, stripped of all gotliic encumbrances. An 
English historian has remarked, on the subject of the patents 
accorded by the first James and Charles, that these mouarchs 
were glad to get rid of the turbident, republican reiigionists, 
at any rate; and freely invested them with any privileges, to 
be exercised on a desolate continent, at the distance of three 
thousand miles, where, as they supposed, it could never be of 
account to extend the arm of prerogative. The English Uni- 
versal History makes the following statement, of the manner 
in which the congregation of Brownists, succeeded in their 
application: — 

" Sir Robert Nannton was then one of the secretaries of 
" state, and the exiled Puritans, as they were then called, knew 
" him to be their friend. 

" They applied to Naunton for leave to settle in those in- 
" hospitable wilds, where the Indians, savage as they were, 
" were more desirable neighbours than the tyrants from 
" whom they fled. Naunton had the address to persuade 
" James I., that it was bad policy to unpeople his own king- 
" doms for the benefit of his neighbours; and that whatever 
" exception he might have, he could have none in granting 
" them liberty of conscience, where they would still continue 
" to be his subjects, and where they might extend his domi- 
" nion. His majesty's answer was, that it was a good and 
" honest proposal, and liberty was accordingly granted."* 

" At our first planting America," says the author of the Eu- 
ropean Settlements, " it was not difficult for a person who had 
" interest at court, to obtain large tracts of land, not inferior in 
'^'extent to kingdoms; and to be invested with a power very 
" little less than regal over them; to govern by what laws, and 
"to form what sort of constitution he pleased."! The same 

* Voh xl. p. 272. t Vol. ii. p. 298. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 45 

author remarks,* "that nothing of'an enhghtened and legisla- sect, ii 
tive spirit appears in the planning of the English colonies, ^-^^v-^^ 
an-'i thai ihe charier governments were evidently copied 
from some of fhe corporations at home." The patent of the 
council of Plymouih comprehended the continent of America, 
froni New Scotland to Carolina. In less than eighty years, 
fiffeen hundred miles of the sea coast were granted away: 
some of the grants, — that especially to lord Clarendon and 
others, of the whole tract of country lying between the thirty- 
first and thirty-sixth degrees of north latitude — extended lo the 
Pacific Ocean: in several instances the same ground was em- 
braced in different grants. 

The acquisition of territory in America was the ruling 
passion of the times; and Charles II. found the gratification 
of this passion an easy mode of compensating his adherents, 
and feeding the rapacity of his courtiers. It is an observa- 
tion of Macpherson, in his Annals, that " the charters of 
Rhode Island and Connecticut were carelessly given by a very 
careless monarch." The agent of Connecticut won the per- 
sonal favour of the monarch, by presenting him with a ring 
of an extraordinary mechanism, the gift of Charles I. to the 
agent's grandfather. He found means, also, to secure the 
support of the chamberlain of his majesty's household, and of 
the lord privy seal, for the colony's petition.! Penn obtained 
his patent from the restored monarch, as Sir George Calvert 
had procured that of Maryland from James I. — by virtue of 
court patronage. It had been promised to his father, admiral 
Penn, a great favourite; and Clarkson relates, in his Life of 
the son, that it was allowed as payment of a debt of sixteen 
thousand pounds sterling, due from the royal government to 
the admiral. Calvert is said by Chalmers to have indited 
his own grant: Penn caused to be given to his the com- 
plexion required by his aims. Both of these illustrious men 
were actuated in the adoption of liberal provisions, by their 
love of freedom, as well as by a knowledge of their true 
interests. But the historians are unanimous in declaring 
that the other lord proprietors gave the pledge of civil and 
religious liberty from no other motive than that of alluring set- 
tlers; and the acknowledged necessity of this expedient be- 
speaks the high character of those, who, in that age, could be 
gained upon no other terms. Much stress is to be laid on the 



* Vol. ii. p. 301. 

f Trumbull's History of Connecticut, b. i. c. 12, 



46 CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PAUT I. coincidence of Chalmers, with these views, and it maybe as- 
'•-^'''•^'^^^ serted from the following j)assages of his Annals.* 

"It was rather the example of the Spaniards, than the practice of 
the renowned nations of antiquity, which was copied by England in 
colonizing ; because similar success and wealth was expected. Prompt- 
ed by liis ambition, periiaps more by his vanity, the primary designs of 
James I. were, to share in the gold and silver which were expectedfrom 
mines, to rule the colonies in the same manner as he had proposed to 
govern Ireland, as territories belonging to his person, and therefore 
subject to his will, though his ultimate views are not so easily discern- 
ed. The great corporations -which have acquired the honour of planting the 
Jirst permanent settlements, had no other object, probably, than the expextation 
of sudden gain from the xoorking of mines, a project, of all others the 
most delusive, the most to be discountenanced by nations which regard 
their own good." p. 6r5. 

"The country which had been denominated Florida by the French 
and Spaniards, by the English Virginia, at length owed its final settle- 
ment as much to the rapacity of the courtiers of Charles II., as to the 
facility of a prince, who wished to reward those to whom he was so 
much indebted, with a liberality that cost him little. The pretence, 
which had been used on former occasions, of a pious zeal for the pro- 
pagation of the gospel among a barbarous people, who inhabited an un- 
cultivated counlr}', WHS successfully employed to procure a grant of that 
immense region, lying on the Atlantic Ocean, between the thirty-sixth 
degree of north latitude and the river Saint Matheo. On the 24th'of 
March, 1653, this territory was erected into a province, by the name of 
Carolina. They, the lord proprietors, were invested with as ample 
riglUs and jurisdictions within their American palatinate, as any bishop 
of Durh^im enjoyed within his diocese. And tiie present charter seems 
to have beencnpitd from that of Maryland. 

" Thus was that colony established upon the broad foundation of a 
regular system of freedom of every kind ; which it was now deemed ne- 
cessary to offer to Fvnglishmen, to induce them to encounter all the difficulties 
of planting (i distant country, covered -with forests, and inhabited by 7iumerous 
tribes, to endure the dmigers of famine, and the damps of the climate.^' 

When the nature and tendency of the colonial charters be- 
gan to be understood at the British court, it was quickly re- 
solved to attempt their destruction. As early as 1635, Charles 
1. assailed that of Massachusetts; and Charles II. repenting of 
his prodigal and heedless distribution of freedoni, continued 
the warfare upon colonial liberties in general. All the char- 
ters of New England were vacated by James II., whose plan 
it was to reduce the colonies under one arbitrary government. 
By her new, and forced coinpact with king William, Massa- 
chusetts lost a valuable part of her original privileges; and in 
the reign of this monarch, Pennsylvania, — although, indeed, 
soon regained, by the indefatigable zeal and consummate ad- 
dress of Penn, — was, without any respect to her charter, 
annexed to New York, the province which had perpetually 
lo wrestle with the royal government for the common rights 

* Page 517. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 47 

of Englishmen. Early in the reign of queen Anne, a bill was SECT. n. 
brought into Parliament, which proposed the abrogation of the ^-^-v^-' 
charters of New England, of East and West New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Carolina, upon the ground of 
their being prejudicial and repugnant to the trade of the king- 
dom, to her majesty's revenue, &c.* The bill failed from the 
weight of reasonings, looking to the interests of the mother 
country. In the year 1748, the ministry offered another bill, 
by which the king's instructions were to have the force of law 
in the colonies; but the plan involved an usurpation which, 
when displayed in full light, and traced in its consequences 
both to England and America, appeared to the majority of the 
Commons too gross and dangerous for immediate adoption. It 
swept away all the charters without trial or legal judgment.! 
Upon the occasion of the extension of the mutiny act to Ame- 
rica, in 1755, the agent of New England, near the British go- 
vernment, Bollan, a man of sagacity and impartial mind, 
apprized his constituents of his possessing the best evidence, 
that it was meditated at the British court " to govern America 
like Ireland, by keeping up a body of standing forces with a 
military chest, under some act similar to the famous Poyning's 
law." 

If more direct and determined efforts to effect the object 
were not subsequently made by the government, until the year 
1764, it was because the enterprise had become too hazard- 
ous. The colonies had attained to considerable strength, and 
grown inflexibly tenacious of their liberties; their aid was in- 
dispensable for the destruction of the French power on this 
continent; and this circumstance made it of course eligible to 
preserve, or at least, not wholly to destroy, their good will and 
national sympathy. It was apprehended, moreover, in queen 
Anne's time, as may be seen by one of the quotations which 
1 have made from Gee, — that they might, if chafed and dis- 
gusted, throw themselves into the arms of France, and turn 
the scales in favour of that hated rival. To considerations of 
this nature are we to ascribe the forbearance so fortunate for 
all parties; not to any tenderness for transatlantic freedom, or 
to a generous admiration of the noble spirit and carriage of the 
transatlantic kindred. Until the period when their enslavement 
was systematically and perseveringly attempted, circumstances 
had uniformly been such, as to render that course of proceed- 

* For a particular account of this bill and the proceedings of the 
House of Commons thereupon, see Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, 
vol. iii.4to. p. 47. 

t See MiHot's Continuation of the History of Massachusetts, p. 146. 
vol. i. 






48 CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PART I. ing, incompatible with the prosecution of objects deemed of 
"^^^^^"^-^ immediate necessity or higher importance. Had not this been 
the case, whig and tory would have alike assailed the consti- 
tutional privileges of British America. "• When the war is 
closed^'''' said the elder Pitt to Dr. Franklin, during the strug- 
gle of 1756, between France and England, " if I should be in 
the ministry, I will take measures to prevent the colonies, from 
having a power, to refuse or delay the supplies, which may be 
wanted for national purposes." 

6. The system of religious freedom, coeval with the esta- 
blishment of some of the colonies, constitutes a proud dis- 
tinction for the founders. There is a glory i,o h^ envied by 
the world, in the first, and continued recognition cn.d en- 
forcement of the rights of conscience, by coustifuJional law. 
Compared with it, the sublimest discoveries in science, the 
most useful inventions in (he arts, ihe most majestic physical 
monuments, must appear as secondary, in the opinion of '.hose 
who consider what would be the elfect, for the dignity and 
happiness of our species, were the example universally fol- 
lowed; and what the evils that have flowed and continue to 
flow, from religious intolerance. This glory cannot be denied 
to the provinces of Maryland, Rhode Island,* and Penn- 
sylvania; and it brightens with (he reflection, how com- 
pletely the human mind was elsewhere shut to the voice 
of reason and humanity. Religious equality was unknown 
to the codes of Europe; and persecution, adopting, wherever 
it prevailed, the injustice as well as terrors of the inquisi- 
tion, raged in the countries claiming to be the most refined 
and enlightened. Even in the United Provinces, so often — to 
use the language of Hume, cited as models of toleration, though 
all sects were admitted, yet civil offices were only enjoyed 
by the professors of the established religion. J need not re- 
mind those who have read the work of this incomparable 
historian, of the state of things in England — of the mean 
and ignoble arts, as well as the sanguinary atrocities practised 
in the wars of the leading sects, which, as he remarks, throw 
an indelible stain on the British annals.f A single extract 
from his history will illustrate the progress of reason and hu- 
manity in the Scottish parliament, but a little before Penn 
organized his commonwealth, and nearly two generations 
after Maryland had taken the principles which I have 
quoted,:}: as the foundations of her polity. " In a session 



* See Note C. f Chap. 68. t Page 32. 



OP THE COLONISTS. 



49 



June, 1673,) of the Scottish parliament, a severe law was SECT. IT. 
enacted against conventicles. Ruinous fines were imposed ^.^'-v^^ 
both on the preachers and hearers, even if the meet- 
ings had been in houses; but field conventicles were sub- 
jected to the penalty of death, and confiscation of goods. 
Four hundred marks (Scots,) were offered as a reward to 
those who should seize the criminals; and they were indemnified 
for any slaughter which they should commit in the execution 
of such an undertaking. And, as it was found difficult 
to get evidence against these conventicles, however numer- 
ous, it was enacted by another law, that, whoever, being 
required by the council, refused to give information upon 
oath, should be punished by arbitrary fines, by imprisonment, 
or by banishment to the plantations.''''* 

The Catholics of Maryland, who had hoped to escape the 
fell spirit of triumphant bigotry, by renouncing their country, 
were not long suffered to remain undisturbed in their remote 
and hard-earned retreat. Their scheme of religious charity, 
was as incomprehensible, as hateful, to their old persecutors. 
Some of the most desperate and fanatical of the sectaries, 
who had repaired to the Catholic asylum, were instigated to 
disturb its tranquillity, and to set themselves in array against 
their magnanimous hosts. During the Commonwealth in 
England, the proprietary government of Maryland was sub- 
verted, and the affairs of the province put into the hands of 
commissioners, creatures of the protector. The spurious as- 
sembly which they convened, after recognizing Cromwell's 
" just title and authority," enacted, that " none who professed 
the Popish religion could be protected in the province by the 
laws of England!" The Catholic missionaries in Maryland, 
who from the year 1640, had begun to carry the light of the 
gospel among the Indians, were compelled to desist, on the 
ground that they aimed at forming a party against the English 
government, to enable themselves to become independent. 

Things took nearly the same course after the reinstating 
of the proprietary by Charles II. " The troubles in Mary- 
" land," says Chalmers, " were made a foundation, whereon 
" were raised fresh complaints against the proprietary in Eng- 
" land for partiality to Papists. Lord Baltimore, in justifi- 
" cation of himself and the province, showed the act of 1649, 
" concerning religion, which had been confirmed in the year 
" 1676, as a perpetual law, and which tolerated and protected 
" every sect of Christians, but gave special privileges to none, 

• Chapter 66. 

Vol. I.— G 



OU CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PART I. " It was in vain for him to represent, that he had endeavoured 
^-^"^'"^"-^ " to divide the offices of his government as nearly equal among 
" Protestants and Roman Catholics, as their abilities would 
" permit; that he had given almost the whole command of the 
" militia to the former, who were entrusted with the care of 
" the arms and military stores. The ministers of Charles II. 
" to throw the imputation of popery from their own shoulders, 
" commanded that all offices should be put into Protestant 
" hands."* 

The Church of England was at length established by law 
in Maryland; and the Catholics were rewarded for the " mild- 
est of laws," for " a moderation unparalleled in the annals 
of the world,"! by being disfranchised, and subjected anew 
to the restrictions and penalties, from which their charter had 
seemed to assure them a perpetual protection. The condition 
to which they were reduced, by the government of William, 
was not only a horrible injustice in itself, but a scandalous 
breach of national faith. The Protestant religion had been al- 
ready established by law in Virginia, in 1661, and that colony 
converted, likewise, into a theatre of persecution. An at- 
tempt was made, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, 
to give the same ascendancy to the Church of England, in 
Carolina; but it encountered a spirited and successful resist- 
ance from the inhabitants. 

7. The excesses of bigotry, which were committed by the 
Puritans of New England, during the seventeenth century, 
can neither be disguised nor defended. They admit, how- 
ever, of some extenuation, which is to be found in such con- 
siderations as the following, offered by one of their descend- 
ants :| — "To vindicate the errors of our ancestors, were to 
" make them our own. It is allowed, that they were culpable; 
" but, we do not concede that, in the present instance, they 
" stood alone, or that they merited all the censure, betowed on 
" them. Laws, similar to those of Massachusetts, were passed 
" elsewhere against the Quakers, and particularly in Virginia. 
" If no execution took place here, as it did in New Eng- 
" land, it was not owing to the moderation of the church, 
" (Jefferson, Virg. Query xviii). The prevalent opinion among 
" most sects of Christians, at that day, that toleration is sinful, 
" ought to be remembered; nor should it be forgotten, that the 
" first Quakers in New England, beside speaking and writing 
'' what was deemed blasphemous, reviled magistrates and 

* Chapter 15. | Chalmers. 

■^ Holmes, in his American Annals. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 



51 



" ministers, and disturbed religious assemblies; and that the SECT. li. 
*' tendency of their tenets and practices was to the subversion v.-'^v-'^ 
" of the commonwealth, in that period of its infancy. (See 
" Hubbard, MS. N. Eng. Hazard Coll. i. 630; ii. 5, 96; and 
" the early historians of New England.) In reviewing the 
" conduct of our revered ancestors, it is but just to make 
" allowance for the times in which they lived, and the occa- 
" sions of their measures." 

Any accusation or sarcasm on this head, comes with a 
wretched air from Great Britain. Her cotemporary history is 
a tissue of all that can be conceived most atrocious, or malig- 
nant, or preposterous, in the hostilities and extravagances of 
fanaticism; it cannot be surpassed in the annals of those enor- 
mities and follies, which provoke alternately laughter and 
tears, scorn and horror. On comparing the condition and 
pretensions of the English and Scotch nations, (for the re- 
proach attaches to the whole,) with those of the zealots of 
New England, every one will perceive at once on which side 
lies the greater load of guilt and shame. Massachusetts had 
no assembly or synod, rivalling the Rump Parliament, or the 
presbytery of Argyle; — there is no transaction in the history 
of that province, upon the same scale of mischief and absur- 
dity, as the affair of the Popish plot — there is nothing like the * 
conviction and execution of Stafford, upon the evidence of 
Gates and Tuberville; no judicial career vying with the cir- 
cuits of Kirk and Jefferies. 

The religious ferment subsided in New England before the 
expiration of the seventeenth century. Not an instance is to 
be found, in her subsequent history, of sanguinary or vexa- 
tious persecution for variations in opinion or worship.* The 
rigor exercised against particular sects, in the other colonies, 
is to be traced in all cases, to the instigation, o\' general 
influence, of the mother country. At the separation, advan- 
tage was immediately taken of the entire freedom of legisla- 
tion, to put all denominations of Christians upon a footing of 
equality; and this proceeding shows how prevalent the spi- 
rit of toleration had become among the colonists. That 
the reason and humanity of England lagged far behind, is 
sufficiently attested by the Draconian Code concerning the Ca- 
tholics, which survived our revolution, and the disabilities from 
which the Protestant dissenters are not yet relieved. If I did not 
find it stated in the fourth number of the Quarterly Review, that 
" the northern states have hardly outgrown their fanaticism," 
and that there is, in America, " scarcely any medium between 

" See Note D. 



52 CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PART I. " over-godliness and a brutal irreligion," I would confident". 

'-^"^'"^ ly appeal for what we now are, as respects our religious 
spirit, to the following statement, of the 31st number of that 
authoritative journal. " The old settlers of America carried 
" with them habits of strict morality and austere religion. 
" The descendants of these old settlers have outgrown the 
" intolerance and bigotry of their ancestors, but have retained 
" their virtues, and embellished them by humane manners. 
" They are republicans as much by principle and duty as by 
" prejudice and inheritance." 

I would not hesitate to concede to the author of " the Bri- 
tish empire in America," that "the great foible of the New 
England history is the story of the witches."* — But this story 
has aspects widely different from that under which it is ex- 
hibited abroad. Belief in witchcraft was epidemic in the 
seventeenth century, and could not fail to extend to New 
England. The insulated situation of her inhabitants, — one 
which presents them, to use their own graphic language, as 
" conflicting with many grievous difficulties and sufferings in 
the vast howling wilderness, among wild men and wild 
beasts"! — the austerity of their domestic habits — the solem- 
nity of their religious feelings — the terrific dangers to which 
they were hourly exposed — their daily intercourse with the 
Indians, whose conversation was perpetually of demons and 
necromancers — the new maladies of body, resulting from a 
new and crude climate — the heart-sickening recollections of 
" the pleasant land of their nativity," of which the ravening 
brood of tyrants would almost be forgotten, as memory recall- 
ed its better features, with the enjoyments and ties of their 
youth — all these influences combined against the force of their 
reason, and contributed to render irresistible the contagion of 
the European superstition. The simple example of the mo- 
ther country might account for their infatuation; and the ex- 
tent, to which it is chargeable upon that example, may be 
understood, from the following passage of Hutchinson's His- 
tory of Massachusetts. " Not many years before the delusion 
" seized New England, Glanville published his witch stories 
" in England; Perkins and other Nonconformists were earlier; 
" but the great authority was that of Sir Matthew Hale, re- 
" vered in New England, not only for his knowledge in the 
" law, but for his gravity and piety. The trial of the witches 
" in Suffolk was published in 1684. All these books were 

* Preface. 

I Petition of the General Court of Massachusetts to the king'. (1680.' 



OF THE COLONISTS. 



33 



" in New England, and the conformity between the behaviour SECT. II. 

" of Goodwin's children, and mos! of the supposed bewitched ^--^--v-^^ 

" at Salem, and the behaviour of those in England, is so exact 

" as to leave no room to doubt the stories had been read by the 

" J\ew England persons themselves, or had been told to them by 

" others who had read them. Indeed, this conformity, instead 

" of giving suspicion, was urged in confirmation of the truth 

" of both; the Old England demons and the New being so 

" much alike. The court justified themselves from books of 

" law, and the authorities of Keble, Dalton, and other lavv- 

" yers, then of the first character, who laid down rules of con- 

" viction as absurd and dangerous as any which were prac- 

" tised in New England."* The authors of the Universal 

History have also stated some palliative facts, which deserve 

to be reported upon such authority. — "In justice to the mi- 

•' nistry and people of New England, we are to observe, that 

" the persecutions for witchcraft were carried on by wretches, 

" partly to gratify their private resentments and interests, and 

" partly from a spirit of enthusiasm and credulity; nor could 

" they have happened, had it not been for the weakness of the 

"' governor and Dr. Mather, who were rendered the tools of 

*' more designing men. The people in general, and some 

*' ministers, particularly Mr. Caleb of Boston, detested them, 

" and remonstrated against them from the beginning, but all 

" to no purpose."! 

All ranks in Scotland and England concurred in raising a 
complete demonocracy for those countries, throughout the se- 
venteenth century. Lord Kaimes asserts, in his Sketches of 
the History of Man, that during the civil wars every one be- 
lieved in magic, charms, spells, sorcery and witchcraft. An 
incident related by Evelyn, for which no parallel is to be 
found in American history, shows the temper of the times, in 
England. " 29th March, 1652 — was that celebrated eclipse 
of the sun, so much threatened by the astrologers, and which 
had so exceedingly alarmed the whole nation, that hardly any 
one would vvork or stir out of their houses, so ridiculously were 
they abused by knavish and ignorant star-gazers." The Long 
parliament, alias, " the great reformation parliament," issued 
several commissions " to discover and prosecute witches," 
and upon those commissions were many unfortunate persons, 
of both sexes, tried and executed. We should not forget the 
testimony of Hume, with respect to the state of Scotland, at 
the period in question. " The fanaticism which prevailed, 

* Vol. ii. chap. 1. f Vol. xxxix. 



54 CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PART I. " acquired, besides the malignants and engagers, a new object 
\-^-v-^^ " of abhorrence. These were the sorcerers. So prevalent was 
" the opinion of witchcraft, that great numbers, accused of 
" that crime, were burnt by sentence of the magistrates, 
" through all parts of Scotland. In a village near Berwick, 
" which contained only fourteen houses, fourteen persons were 
" punished by fire, and it became a science every where much 
" studied and cultivated, to distinguish a true witch by proper 
" trials and symptoms.^^* 

I have now before me a quarto volume, published in Lon- 
don, in the present year (1819), and entitled, "The memo- 
rable things that fell out within the Island of Britain, from 
1638 to J 683, by the Rev. Mr. Robert Law, of that time." 
This work is little more than a chronicle of the witchcraft of 
Britain, during the interval to which it is confined; and, truly, 
the details of credulity and judicial murder which it furnishes, 
might entitle New England to expect very gentle usage in that 
quarter on the subject of witchcraft. Among the papers pre- 
fixed to the " Memorable things," is a " True relation of an 
apparition, expressions, and actings, of a spirit, which infested 
the house of Andrew Mackie, in Scotland, in 1695;" which 
relation is signed on oath by at least twelve regular clergy- 
men of especial sanctity and authority. The worthy minister. 
Law, has left, in his journal, a notice of New England, which 
may reasonably be taken as the epitome of the popular notions 
of the day, concerning that colony. It is sufficiently remarka- 
ble to be copied. 

" (August, 1676.) These of New England that had planted that part 
of America, are grievously troubled by the natives, who make in- 
roads upon the plantations, and kill many of the English, h:iving by 
their slaves, (that were with the English and fled to them again,') 
learned the art of shooting guns, purchasing out of France and Holland 
guns, swords, and pycks, make tliem much adoe and great trouble, so 
that they were necessitate to shift for themselves in other parts of the 
world. The truth is, the Protestants in all parts of the world suffer in 
these sad tyraes. The origin of these in New England, went from Eng- 
land in the days of queen Mary of England, when the persecution against 
the Protestants was raised there, and in the days of queen Elizabeth, 
her successor, a Protestant, was well supplyed with money and otiier 
necessaries to make good that plantation. They were all furnished with 
able ministers, and grew up to a famous and glorious church. Their 
church government was and is yet independent, and of their state it is 
aristocracie. They refused to uvm the king' of Britain as their ti7ig-, only in 
commemoration of their coming out of England, they now and then send him 
a free gift." 

For thirty years after the settlement of Massachusetts, — 
* Chapter 59. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 55 

while victims were daily sacrificed by fire and the rope, in sect. Ii. 
Great Britain, — none suffered for witchcraft in that colony, v-^-v^^ 
Hutchinson asserts truly, that " more were put to death in a 
single county of England for that cause, than suffered in New 
England from the planting until his time, in 1760."* The 
phrenzy endured in America but seven months; whereas 
it may be said to have continued, with little or no abate- 
ment, in the mother country, in Scotland particularly, — 
for a long series of years. If Cotton Mather partook of the 
wretched delusion, he was at least as excusable as Sir Mat- 
thew Hale; and we may doubt whether there was any learn- 
ed judge of New England, cotemporary with chief justice 
Blackstone, who would have gravely summed up the evi- 
dence, respecting the reality of witchcraft, and as gravely 
decided it to be, " most eligible to conclude, that, in general, 
such a thing as witchcraft had been."t North America, of the 
eighteenth century, can furnish no counterpart for the story of 
the Cocklane ghost. Hutchinson has, on this subject, some ob- 
servations in addition to those I have quoted from him, which 
ought not to be withheld. " The trial of Richard Hatheway, 
" the impostor, before lord chief justice Holt, was ten or 
" twelve years after the trials in New England. This was a 
" great discouragement to prosecutions in England for witch- 
*' craft, but an effectual stop was not put to them until the act 
" of parliament in the reign of his late majesty, George If. 
" Even this did not wholly cure the common people, and we 
" hear of old women ducked and cruelly murdered within 
" these last twenty years. Reproach, then, for hanging 
" witches, although it has been often cast upon the people of 
" JVeic England by those of Old, yet it must have been done 
" with an ill grace.^'' 

8. As respects political intrepidity, we may challenge a 
comparison between our ancestors, and the communities the 
most renowned for that potent virtue. The instances of it with 
which our colonial annals abound, are inestimably precious, 
as lessons and incentives for the American people at all times, 
and under all circumstances. We cannot too often remind 
each other how heroically the first settlers, and the genera- 



* Hist, of Mass. vol. ii. chap. i. 

■j- Commentaries, b. iv. c. Iv. " Witchcraft ov sorcery is a truth to which 
every nation in the world, hath, in its turn, borne testimony, by either 
examples seemingly well attested, or prohibitory laws, which at least 
suppose the possibility of a commerce with evil spirits." 



66 CIIAKACTER AND MERITS 

PART I. tions immediately succeeding, overlooked their ovvn physical 
'^-^'^^-'^ weakness and domestic dangers, and braved the power and 
pride of the mother country, in asserting the rights of man and 
the privileges recognized or implied in their charters. The 
complaints which the British historians and orators have ut- 
tered concerning their haughty and refractory spirit, and their 
early aspirations after positive sovereignty, are to be cherished 
as testimonies borne to the elevation of their character. I re- 
peat with exultation, and think there should be no anxiety on 
the part of any American to avoid, the reproaches intended to 
be made by such allegations as the following: — 

" The persons whom the Plymouth company sent over to America, 
as soon as they landed there, considered themselves as individuals 
united by voluntary associations, possessing the natural rights of men 
who form a societ}', to adopt what mode of government, and to enact 
what laws they deemed most conducive to general felicity. Suitably 
to tliese ideas, they framed all their future plans of court and ecclesi- 
usticnl ])olicy.'* 

" Massachusetts, in conformity to its accustomed principles, acted 
during the civil v.ars, almost altogether as an independent state. It 
formed leagues not only with the neighbouring colonies, but with fo- 
reign nations, without the consent or knowledge of the government of 
England. It permitted no appeals from its courts to the judicatories 
of the sovereign state ; and it refused to exercise its jurisdiction in the 
name of the commonwealth of England. It erected a mint at Boston, 
impressing the year 1652 on the coin, as the era of independence.** 
Thus evincing to all what had been foretold by the wise, that a people 
of such principles, religious and political, settling at so great a distance 
from control, Avould necessarily form an independent state.f 

" During the greater part of the reign of Charles II., the colony of 
Connecticut acted rather as an independent state, than as the inconsi- 
derable territory of a great nation. The general orders of that prince 
were contemned, because the royal interposition was deemed incon- 
sistent with the charter. The acts of navigation were despised and 
disobeyed, because they were considered equally inconsistent with 
thefreedom of trade as with the security of ancient privileges : and the 
courts of justice refused to allow appeals to England, because the pow- 
ers of ultimate jurisdiction were claimed from the patent. i; 

" On receiving authentic news of the revolution of 1688, and the 
accession of AVilliam and Mary, though the people of Massachusetts 
spoke with deference of the higher powers in England, and of their 
relationshi]) to it, they resolved, with their peculiar spirit, that the settle- 
ment of their government on that extraordinary occasion, belonged 
wholly to themselves.''^ 

" The Americans have had all along a reluctance to order and good 
government, since their first establishment in their country. They 
have been obstinate, undutiful, and ungovernable from the very begin- 
ning ; from their first infant settlements in that country. They began 
to manifest this spirit as early as the reign of Charles I. They disputed 



* Robertson's History of America, vol. iv, 
\ Chalmers, chap. viii. Annals. 
1: Ibid. 



OP THE COLONISTS. 57 

our right of fishing on their coasts, in the times of the commonwealth SECT. II. 

and protectorate, &c.* ■ _^ _ -^_ . 

" The bad consequences of planting northern colonies were early 
predicted. Sir Josiah Child foretold, before the revolution, that they 
would, in the end, prove our rivals in power, commerce, and manufac- 
tures. Davenant adopted the same ideas, and foresaw what has since 
happened : he foresaw that whenever America found herself of suffi- 
cient strength to contend with the mother country, she would endea- 
vour to form herself into a separate and independent state. This has 
been the constant object of New England, almost from her earliest in- 
fancy," &c.f 

We find the colony of Virginia, when only in its seven- 
teenth year, (1624,) and just recovered from the heaviest 
disasters, answering, through its general assembly, an angry and 
insidious inquiry into its condition and dispositions, ordered 
by the king and privy council, and resisting the artifices and 
threats of the commissioners deputed from England for the 
purpose of extorting a surrender of its charter, with the ut- 
most sagacity and boldness, or, to use the phrase of its histo- 
rian, Stith, " with sharpness and vigour;" — with an array of 
the loftiest principles, and in a style of composition, very little 
inferior to the best of that age.| The same colony, only 
twelve years after, seized the royal governor, Harvey, become 
odious to them by his exactions and insolence, and sent him a 
prisoner to London. And it is further illustrative of her in- 
trepidity, that Charles I. considered the proceeding as an act 
of rebellion, and reinstated the obnoxious officer, — to super- 
sede him, however, immediately, by one of a character 
dissimilar in all respects. Virginia, prepossessed in favour 
of the royal cause, resisted the government of the Protecto- 
rate, by arms, in 1651, and submitted at length to the power- 
ful squadron sent to enforce her obedience, only upon terms 
which do infinite honour to her courage, and remain a striking 
memorial of her resolute and enlightened attachment to liber- 
ty. The following abstract of some of the articles of capitu- 
lation will be read with interest. 1 . " The plantation of 
" Virginia^ and all the inhabitants thereof, shall remain in 
"due subjection to the Commonwealth of England^ not as a 

* Earl Talbot, in the House of Lords. Debate of Feb. 29, 1776. 

I Lord Mansfield, in the House of Lords. Debate Nov. 15, 1775. 

i See the account of this controversy, in the 5th book of Stith's 
History of Virginia. "Every titheable or taxable inhabitant," says 
Burk, "voted for members of assembly. And what honour does not 
the choice of such an assembly as that of 1624, reflect on the colonists ; 
what .sagacity and public spirit does it not suppose in them, at a junc- 
ture so delicate and trying, to have selected a body which immediatel)' 
saw their true interest, and pursued it with ardour and unanimity, in the 
face of the royal commissioners, and in defiance of the authority and 
resentment of the king." 

Vol. I.— H 



58 CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PART I. " conquered country, but as a country submitting by their own 
^•^"'^'^^^ *' voluntary act, and shall enjoy such freedoms and privileges 
*' as belong to the free people of England. 2. The general as- 
" sembly, as formerly, shall convene, and transact the affairs 
" of the colony. 3. The people of Virginia shall have a 
" free trade, as ilie people of England.^ to all places, and with 
" all nations. 4. Virginia shall be free from all taxes, cus- 
" toms, and impositions whatsoever; and none shall be im- 
" posed on them, without consent of the general assembly; 
" and neither forts nor castles be erected, or garrisons main- 
" tained without their own consent."* 

Her subsequent conduct has been the theme of lofty pane- 
gyric with all the historians. She took advantage of the sud- 
den death of a governor named by Cromwell , to restore the 
royal officers, and proclaimed Charles II. even before intelli- 
gence was received of the demise of the Protector. The spirit 
which produced these exploits, descended without interruption 
or enervation, and proved its identity and divinity in the reso- 
lutions offered by Patrick Henry, in 1765; in the propositions 
for a general congress, and in the Declaration of Independence. 

The career pursued by Massachusetts from her birth, 
is pre-eminent for daring, as well as dexterity, and may 
be considered in these respects as unique in the annals of the 
world. To the charter, as containing a confirmation of some 
portion of her natural liberty, she clung with a pertinacious- 
ness, under every vicissitude and pressure, which must awaken 
in all generous breasts, a thrilling sympathy, and a lively admi- 
ration. Diminutive as she was in 1635, yet, when a rumour 
reached the colonies, that the measure of a general government 
for New England, was decided upon at the British Court, her 
magistrates and clergy agreed unanimously that, "if such a go- 
vernor were sent, the colony ought not to accept him, but to de- 
fend its lawful possessions." When her patent was demanded 
in 1638, by order of the king in council, it was answered, that 
if the charter should be taken away, the people would re- 
move to another place, and confederate under some new form 
of government; and "such was their resolution," says the 
historian Hutchinson, " that they would have sought a va- 
cuum domiciUiim^ (a favourite expression with them,) in some 
part of the globe, where they would, according to their appre- 
hensions, have been free from the controul of any European 
power."! We have the evidence of one of the spies of 

* See vol. ii. chap. ii. of Biirk's History of Virginia : — for the entire 
convention, and a jiistcommenuuy upon the magnanimous deportment 
t)F the colony. 

t Vol.i.p. 8r. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 69 

Archbishop Laud, in the colony, that it was, at this period of SECT. ii. 
her history, accounted perjury and treason in her General ^^^'^v-^-' 
GJourt, to speak of appeals to the king. 

In 1 641 , the General Court established the one hundred laws, 
called the Body of Liberties. The strain of them, so abhorrent 
and advantageously distinguished, from the genius of the cotem- 
porary legislation in England, shows with what fearless deter- 
mination these pilgrims marched up to their invariable object, 
of civil and religious freedom. The memorable league of the 
New England plantations, in 1643,* is another proof of 
the independent and confident spirit, with which they provided 
for their own protection. " It originated," says Chalmers, 
" with Massachusetts, always fruitful in projects of indepen- 
dence. No patent legalized the confederacy, which continued 
until the dissolution of the charters, in 1686. Neither the 
consent nor approbation of the governing powers in England 
was ever applied for or given. The principles upon which 
this famous association was formed were altogether those of 
self-government, of absolute sovereignty"! Massachusetts saw 
from the beginning, the true bearing of the acts of naviga- 
tion of 1651, and 1660, and of the custom house duties pre- 
scribed in 1672, upon her interests and natural rights, and she 
evaded or resisted them, until the whole weight of the mother 
country was turned to their enforcement. The officer sent 
from England, to collect the customs at Boston, was recalled, 
upon his representation, " that he was in danger of being 
punished with death, by virtue of an ancient law, as a sub- 
verter of the constitution." When taxed with disobedience, 
the General Court did not hesitate to allege, that " the acts of 
navigation were an invasion of the rights and privileges of the 
subjects of his majesty in that colony, they being not repre- 
sented in Parliament; and that, according to the usual sayings 
of the learned in the law, the laws of England were bounded 
within the four seas, and did not reach Jimerica?'' Some of 
the other provinces joined in this language, and were equally 
hardy in their practice. Massachusetts, from the outset, openly 
contended against the doctrine, that Parliament had a right to 
make laws binding the colonies in all cases whatsoever; she 
denied the competency of that body to impose any tax upon 
them, without the consent of their legislatures. Her theory, 
on this head, was solemnly proclaimed in 1692, and embo- 
died in one of the laws which she then framed under the new 

* See vol. i. of Trumbull's History of Connecticut, for a dptailed 
account of tliis confederation. 
t Chap. viii. Annals. 



60 CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PART 1. charter received from William. In 1663, Rhode Island for- 
^^-^■v-^*-' mally enacted it, as one of her privileges, that no tax should 
be imposed on, or required of the colonists, but by the Gene- 
ral Assembly. The Assembly of New York nobly passed reso- 
lutions to the same purport, in the beginning of the eighteenth 
century. As early as 1624, the Assembly of Virginia had 
set the example of asserting this principle as fundamental. 

Massachusetts manifested a strong predilection for the 
cause of the independents in England, during the civil 
wars; but she resisted the attempts of the Long Parlia- 
ment upon .the sacred charter. Being strongly advised, in 
1641, when suffering much domestic distress and embar- 
rassment, to solicit parliamentary aid or patronage, she 
steadily refused, with a train of reasoning, which well de- 
serves to be noted. — " If we place ourselves under the protec- 
tion of Parliament, we must be subject to all such laws as 
they should make, or at least, such as they might impose upon 
us, in which course, though Parliament might intend our 
good, yet it might prove very prejudicial."* 

The carriage of the northern colonies, on the restoration, 
when all England fell prostrate before the monarchical pageant, 
— may be best told in the angry language of the loyal Chalmers. 
" The people of New England received the tidings of that in- 
teresting event with a caution bordering, on incredulity; an- 
nounced the king in a manner almost insulting; and submitted 
not to the resolutions of the supreme power, till they had, by their 
own resolves^ declared their oicn privileges.** The affectionate 
reception which Connecticut gave to the regicides, even after 
their attainder by Parliament, who here enjoyed a long life of 
miserable security, and died in peace, sufficiently demon- 
strates her principles and attachments.! She received the 
royal commissioners with studied indifference, and with a 
fixed resolution to deride their authority and disobey their com- 
mands..]:" 

* Hutchinson, chapter i. 

f The regicides, to whom our author refers, were Whalley and 
CioflTe, men of great abiUties and accomplishments, of a noble spirit, 
and winning demeanour. The conduct of the people of New England 
towards them, does not, methinks, suffer in the comparison with the 
procedure related in the following passage of Evelyn's Memoirs : 
" This day, the 30th of Jany. 1660, were the cajxases of those arch 
rebells Cromwell, Bradshaw, the judge who condemned his majesty, 
and Irctou, sonn-in-law to ye usurper, dragg\l out of their superb 
tombs in Westmr. among the kings, to Tyburn, and hang'd on the gal- 
lows there from 9 in ye morning till six at night, and then buried under 
that fatal and ignominious monumemt in a deepe pit, thousands who had 
seen them in all their pride, being spectators." (Vol. i. p. 317.) 

+ Chapter xii. Annals. 



OP THE COLONISTS. 61 

New England generally, prohibited all appeals to the par- SECT. II. 
liament or the king in council; and Massachusetts in particu- ^-^^^-■*»' 
lar, fined and imprisoned certain persons, for designing to so- 
licit parliament to revise a sentence of the General Court. 
This body, on the arrival of the commissioners sent by Charles 
II. in 1665, to investigate and regulate the affairs of New 
England, put them under close supervision; refused to recog- 
nize their authority, or to impose the oath of allegiance required 
from the people, unless with nice restrictions and limitations; 
counteracted all their proceedings, and resolved " to adhere to 
the patent so dearly obtained and so long enjoyed by undoubted 
right in the sight of God and man." The commissioners would 
seem to have been imbued with something of the spirit which 
actuates the modern English critics. One of their letters, to 
the general court, dated in 1668, begins thus: "We have re- 
ceived a letter from your marshal, subscribed by the secreta- 
tary, so full of untruth, and in some places wanting grammar 
construction, that we are unwilling," &c. The account which 
Chalmers gives of the conclusion of their transactions in 
Massachusetts, is an amusing picture of the temper of both 
parties. 

" The commissioners at length peremptorily asked the general court, 
* Do you acknowledge the royal commission to be of full force to all 
the purposes contained in it ?' But, to a question at once so decisive 
and embarrassing, the general court excused itself from giving a direct 
answer, and chose rather to 'plead his majesty's charter." The com- 
missioners, however, attempting to hear a complaint against the go- 
vernor and company, the general court, with a characteristic vigour, 
published by sound of trumpet, its disapprobation of this proceeding, 
and prohibited every one from abetting a conduct so inconsistent with 
their duty to God and their allegiance to the kiiig. And, in May, 1665, 
the commissioners determined ' to lose no more labour upon men, who 
misconstrued all their endeavours, and opposed the royal authority.' 
They soon after departed, threatening their opponents 'with the pu- 
nishment which so many concerned in the late rebellion had met with 
in England.' "* 

All the agents of New England with the British govern- 
ment, had it in especial charge "to consent to nothing that 
should infringe the liberties granted by charter." 

The manner in which Connecticut frustrated the attempt 
of Andros, in 1675, to acquire for the Duke of York the 
country lying westward of the Connecticut river — the discom- 
fiture of the same tyrannical viceroy of the Stuarts, when he 
endeavoured, in 1687, to possess himself of her charter — his 
deposition and imprisonment by the people of Boston, in 1689, 



chap. xvi. Annals. 



62 CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PART I. and the resumption, by all the New England provinces, of 
'^-*'~v-^>^ their abrogated charters and forms of government, even be- 
fore they received any certain intelligence of the success of 
William in England — the re-establishment, in 1668, of the 
authority of Massachusetts over New Hampshire, by the ge- 
neral court, in defiance of the royal authority* — the violent 
subversion, in 1672, of the proprietary government in New 
Jersey — the insurrectionary movements of Albemarle in 1677 
— the revolution of 1719 in South Carolina — the successful 
struggles of the general court of Massachusetts, between the 
years 1721 and 1730, vs^ith the royal governors of that inter- 
val, backed as they were by the countenance of the crown — 
are all so many additional incidents, which may be singled 
out of a multitude, to exemplify the passionate zeal, the 
fearlessness, and activity of the first generations of Ameri- 
cans, in the cause of civil liberty; as their institutions may 
be cited to prove their clear discernment of its true prin- 
ciples and appropriate forms. England possessed, in the 
seventeenth century, some votaries to the same cause, of 
tile largest views and boldest determination: but the true 
model of freedom was, as I have already intimated, neither 
sought nor comprehended by the nation in general. This is 
palpable from the despotic genius of the Commonwealth, and 
the kindred spirit of the Restoration. The main spring and 
principle of the civil wars, and even of the revolution of 1688, 
ivas religious rancour; not the desire or intelligence of political 
liberty — an object always subordinate to the gratification of 
lanatical hate, and the acquisition of inordinate power. It is 
said by Hume, that the British were, in the lime of Charles I., 
and till long after, of all the European nations, the most 
under the influence of that religious spirit, which tends to in- 
flame bigotry and beget desperate factions. " The Scotch 
nation," he adds, " plainly discovered, after the restoration, 
that their past resistance had proceeded more from the turbu- 
lency of their aristocracy, and the bigotry of their ecclesiastics, 
than from any fixed passion towards civil liberty." 

The New England plantations could not feel, and did not find 
themselves, secure in their distance from the British court. 
Whatever influence the circumstance of this distance might be 
supposed to exert in bracing their spirit, it must have been more 
than counteracted by the immense disparity of strength; and the 
belief, that, if pressed, a new emigration was their only 



* Chalmers, chap. xix. 



OP THE COLONISTS. 



63 



resource. Their situation altogether,— apparently so forlorn and sect. ii. 
critical, — had a stronger tendency to inspire docility and sub- ^-^-v-^^.' 
mission to the house of Stuart, than the relative position of 
the British people. But let the language and countenance of 
the government of New England, in the year 1685, be com- 
pared with those of the British parliament, towards James II. 
at the same period. " The parliament," says Hume,* "pro- 
ceeded to examine the dispensing power, and voted an address 
against it. The address was expressed in the most respectful 
and submissive manner, yet it was very ill received by the 
king, and his answer contained a flat denial. The Commons 
were so daunted with this reply, that they kept silence a long 
time; and when Coke, a member from Derby, rose and said, 
' I hope we are all Englishmen, and not to be frightened by a 
few hard words,' so little spirit appeared in that assembly, 
often so refractory and mutinous, that they sent him to the 
tower for bluntly expressing a free and generous sentiment. 

" On their next meeting, they very submissively proceeded 
to the consideration of the supply demanded by the court, and 
even went so far as to establish funds for paying the sum voted 
in nine years and a half. The king, therefore, had, in effect, 
almost without a struggle, obtained a total victory over the 
Commons; and instead of contesting an additional revenue to 
the crown; and rendering the king in some degree independent, 
contributed to increase those imminent dangers, with which 
they had so good reason to be alarmed." 

I shall have occasion, as I proceed with the main subject, 
to notice so many brilliant traits of civil courage, in the ca- 
reer of the colonists, that I ought to be satisfied, with what, 
I have adduced; and it is not, moreover, a part of my plan, 
to particularize here, their heroic proceedings after the passage 
of the stamp act; which are sufficiently emblazoned in the 
admiration expressed by the most respectable voices and 
pens of England herself. But I must be indulged with culling 
from the history of Massachusetts a couple of incidents more, 
as contrasts to the anecdote just quoted from Hume. When 
Andros, as governor general of New England, by the appoint- 
ment of James II. imposed, in the beginning of 1688, a lax of 
a penny in the pound on all the towns under his government, 
the select men, (municipal officers,) of those of Massachusetts, 
particularly of Ipswich, voted, "that inasmuch as it was against 
the common privileges of English subjects, to have money 
raised without their own consent given in an assembly or par- 
liament; therefore they would petition the king for liberty of 
an assembly before they made any rates" — nor did they yield 

* Chapter Isx. 



64. CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PART I. the point, although put to the test by imprisonment and heavy 
'^-^'"^'''^^ fines.* The other case is of the year 1761. In that year, the 
governor of the colony, Bernard, took upon himself to equip 
the province sloop Massachusetts, upon a more expensive scale 
than that prescribed by the House of Assembly, or than what 
ivas called, " the old establishment." On receiving from 
him a message relating to it, the house immediately prepared, 
and voted by a large majority, an answer which contained the 
following passages: "Justice to ourselves, and our constituents 
. oblige us to remonstrate against the method of making or in- 
creasing establishments, by the governor and council. It is. 
in effect, taking from the House their most darling privilege, 
the right of originating all taxes." 

" No necessity can be sufficient to justify a House of Repre- 
sentatives in giving up such a privilege; /or it would be of little 
consequence to the people, whether they loere subject to George 
or Louis, the king of Great Britain or the French king^ if both 
were arbitrary, as both would be, if both could levy taxes without 
parliament.'^'' 

9. The most prejudiced of the English writers have scarcely 
ventured to decry the domestic morals and habits of the early 
colonists. Industry, order, temperance, and the social affec- 
tions were demonstrated by the rapid increase of their means, 
comforts, and numbers, and by the stability of their institu- 
tions. The rarity of political changes, or intestine disscn- 
tions, of domestic origin, after the several communities were 
formed, is in itself, adequate proof of the general subordina- 
tion to the authority of law and reason. Hutchinson men- 
tions that " in the Massachusetts colony, for the first thirty 
years, although the governor and assistants were annually 
chosen by the body of the people, yet they confined themselves 
to the principal gentlemen of family, estate, understanding 
and integrity;" and that " there were instances in the char- 
ter governments of Connecticut and Rhode Island, where 
the representatives had virtue enough to withstand popular 
prejudices, when the governor's council had not."t The 
question of restoring to New England, the charter suppressed 
by Jarnes II., was submitted, after the accession of William III. 
to Hook, an eminent lawyer of the British capital. This 
enlightened individual, in pronouncing in the affirmative, did 

* See " A Narrative of the Miseries of New England, by reason of an 
arbitrary g;overnment erected there by James II." This curious pam- 
phlet, which arraigns with the utmost severity the administration of An- 
dres, was printed in Boston during what it calls " his tyrannic reign," 
and re-printed in the same place in the year 1775. 

f Vol, ii. chap, i. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 65 

Mot hesitate to describe the colonists as " a people who had SECT. ii. 
?naintained civility beyond any other on earth.^^ The authors v^»-v-^ 
of the modern part of the Universal History, referring to the 
same era, remark, that " the police of the inhabitants of New 
England, with regard to their morals, surpassed that of any 
in the world." Such, indeed, was their reputation for dis- 
cipline and virtue, that the pious of the mother country, sent 
over their children for education. The legislators of New 
England were, indeed, exorbitantly austere with respect to 
the elegant recreations of civilized life: They prohibited, 
moreover, horse racing, cock fighting, bull and bear baiting. 
In excluding these vulgar and vicious sports, they certainly did 
not suffer in the contrast with those who, in Britain, tolerated 
such pastime as the following, of which we read in Evelyn's 
Memoirs: "There was now (April, 1667,) a very gallant 
horse to be baited to death with dogs. — They run him through 
ivith their swords, when the dogs did not succeed," &c. 

Religion was the fundamental order of society, and uni- 
versally cultivated, in all the colonies north of the Potomac, 
except New York. Even in this province, into whose 
political being it had not entered as an element, as in the 
case of Pennsylvania and New England, it flourished in 
considerable vigour and diffusion. Throughout New Eng- 
land, the first measure in the organization of the com- 
monwealths, was to establish a system, by which all should 
partake of religious worship and instruction. The represen- 
tation which was made officially in 1680, to the Committee 
of Plantations, concerning the condition of Connecticut in 
this respect, admits of being applied to the whole of New 
England. " Great care is taken of the instruction of the 
people of Connecticut in the Christian religion, by minis- 
ters catechising and preaching twice every Sabbath, and 
sometimes on lecture days; and also by masters of families 
instructing and teaching their children and servants, which the 
law commands them to do. We have twenty-six towns and 
there are twenty-one churches in them, and in every one there 
is a settled minister." 

A mild, steady, sedulous piety, very little polemical or 
fanatical, distinguished the founders of Pennsylvania; spread 
its purifying and quickening influence over the new settlers 
of every nation and sect, and gave a permanent complexion 
of efficacious faith to that province. New Jersey had risen 
under the same fortunate auspices, and wore a similar 
aspect. To the excellent religious character of Maryland, 
during the seventeenth century, even Chalmers bears tes- 

VOL. 1.— I 



66 CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PART I. timony, in opposition to those who, out of a charitable abo- 
^-^-v-^k^ mination of the bare existence of Popery, and in order to 
persuade the Archbishop of Canterbury of the necessity of an 
established Protestant religion in the province, scrupled not to 
paint it as a " Sodom of uncleanness, and a pest house of 
iniquity."* Virginia was devoted fo the Church of England; 
supported a numerous clergy, upon a most liberal establish- 
ment; and in all her ecclesiastical arrangements, as they are 
detailed by the historian, Beverley,t manifested a lively and 
honest solicitude for the diffusion and decency of divine worship. 
In her feelings on this head, Burk finds a satisfactory solution 
for her tenacious adherence to the royal cause. His observations 
are sufficiently remarkable to be copied. " The measures of 
the patriots in England, manifestly tended to a complete al- 
teration, or rather abolition, of the forms and discipline of that 
church, which the Virginians had been accustomed to revere; 
and the Puritans, whom they held in abhorrence, appeared as 
the principal agents in this scheme for the destruction of reli- 
gion." " This, I apprehend, was the principal, if not the only 
motive for their new born ardour, in favour of royalty. Their 
political attachments were obviously on the other side; and 
in' the career of liberty and resistance, they had even antici- 
pated and outstripped the Parliament. They had the same 
marked regard for their rights and privileges, as this illustrious 
body; they resisted with equal ardour, and for a long time, 
with greater success, the encroachments and the insolence of 
the crown. "I 

For the practical religion of Great Britain, during the seven- 
teeni.h century, I refer my readers to any the most national of 
her historians. In marking the furious, desolating fanaticism 
of the Roundheads, Hume admits, that riot, disorder, and in- 
fidelity prevailed very much among the partisans of the 
church and monarchy. The mutual hatred and excitement of 
sects gave, he remorks. just reason to dread, at every moment, 
" all the horrors of the ancient massacres and proscriptions. "§ 
A state of faction and rebellion, of political and religious dis- 
sension, inflamed into sanguinary wars — was but little favour- 
able to morals, and necessarily produced a general taint, which 
would not soon, if ever, be completely expelled. Its effects 
are visible to us in the literary works which are in our hands, 
and which justify the observation of Hume, that, of all the 

* See Clialip.crs' Political Annals, cliap. xv. 

•j- History of Vn-p/inia. from 1585 to 1780, b. iv. c. vii. 

4; History of Yiri^iitia, vol. ii. c. ii. 

§ History of England, chap. Ixii. 



OP THE COLONISTS. 



67 



considerable writers of the age of the two last Stuarts, " Sir SECT. ii. 
William Temple is almost the only one who kept himself al- v-^-^v-^^ 
together unpoihjted by that inundation of vice and licentious' 
ness which overwhelmed the nation.''''* The fidelity of the 
general picture drawn by the same master hand, has never 
been questioned. " The people, during the reign of Charles II. 
and James II. were, in a great measure, cured of that wild 
fanaticism, by which they had formerly been so much agi- 
tated. Whatever new vices they might acquire, it may be 
doubted, whether, by this change, they were, in the main, 
much losers in point of morals. By the example of the king 
and the cavaliers, licentiousness and debauchery became very 
prevalent in the nation. The pleasures of the table were 
much pursued. Love was treated rather as an appetite than a 
passion. The one sex began to abate of the national charac- 
ter of chastity, without being able to inspire the other with 
sentiment or delicacy. The abuses in the former age, arising 
from overstrained pretensions of piety, had much propagated 
the spirit of irreligion; and many of the ingenious men of this 
period, lie under the imputation of Deism. The same fac- 
tions which formerly distracted the nation were revived, and 
exerted themselves in the most ungenerous and unmanly en- 
terprises against each other."! 

10. The parliamentary party in England ostentatiously 
contemned all human learning, and were wholly indifferent 
to the object of general education. The American colonists 
had scarcely opened the forests, and constructed habitations, 
when they bent their attention to that object. As early as 1637, 
only a few years after the landing at Plymouth, — the legisla- 
ture of Massachusetts founded and endowed, for the ancient 
languages, and higher branches of learning, — a college, which 
began to confer degrees in 1642; and has since ripened into 
an university of the first class both in extent and usefulness. 
To this institution, the plantations of Connecticut and New 
Haven, as long as they remained unable to support a similar one 
at home, contributed funds from their public purse, and sent 
such of their youth as they wished to be thoroughly educated.^ 



* Ibid. chap. Ixxi. 
t Ibid. 

t " The Rev V/. Sheppard wrote, in 1644, to the commissioners of 
the united colonies of New England, representing the necessity of 
further assistance for the support of scholars at Cambridge, whose pa- 
rents were needy, and desired them to encourage a general contribii- 
iiou tlirough the colonies. The commissioners approved tlie moti jn ; 



68 CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PART I. It seems almost incredible, how much was accomplished in this 
N-^-v-^^ way, in the very formation of the settlements. On the death of the 
first literary emigrants, natives of Massachusetts, taught in the 
province, were qualified to fill the void; and not a few of the 
first alumni of Harvard College attained to considerable lite- 
rary and political distinction in the mother country. But what 
is chiefly remarkable, is the provision made for the education of 
the body of the people, then and in all future time. As a spe- 
cimen of the arrangements common to the New England 
colonies, I will state those of Connecticut. By her first code 
of 1639, every town, consisting of fifty families, was obliged 
by the laws, to maintain a good school, in which reading and 
writing should be well taught ; and in every country town a 
good grammar school was instituted. Large tracts of land 
were given and appropriated by the legislature, to afford them 
a permanent support. The select men of every town were 
obliged by law to take care that all the heads of families 
should instruct their children and servants to read the English 
tongue well. 

We have read a very eloquent speech of Mr. Brougham, 
on the Education of the Poor, pronounced in the British House 
of Commons (May, 1818,) in which he lavishes compli- 
ments and congratulations upon Scotland, for her system of 
parish sthools. He declares, that the attention which she had 
bestowed, in early times, upon the subject of national educa- 
tion, reflected immortal honour upon her inhabitants, and that 
it had given them the most enviable characteristics, as well 
as the happiest fortunes. It was only, however, as he correctly 
states, in 1696, that the scheme of extending the means of 
instruction to the poorer classes, was rendered effectual, by 
what he styles " one of the last and best acts of the Scottish 
Parliament,'^ — " a law justly named among the most precious 
legacies which it bequeathed to its country." If the merit and 
the felicity of Scotland on this score,be so great, how is not New 
England exalted and blessed! — where, in the midst of dan- 
gers and labours the most arduous in which a community of 
men could be involved, the system so justly commended by 
the British orator, was earlier, and has been, I can venture to 
assert, more uniformly and completely, carried into effect. 

and, for the encouragement of literature, recommended it to the ge- 
neral courts in the respective colonics, to take it into their considera- 
tion, and to give it general encouragement. The general courts adopt- 
ed the recommendation, and contributions of grain and provisions 
were annually made, thioughout the united colonies, for the charitable 
end proposed."— Trumbull's Hist, of Con. vol. i. ch. viii. 



OP THE COLONISTS. 69 

The outcasts of England, in the first part of the seven- sect. Ii. 
teenth century, brought hither with them, that sense of the v.^-v-^1/ 
importance and beauty of national education, which their 
descendants have constantly cherished, and to which England 
herself, with all her boasted illumination, is, now only and re- 
luctantly, come. It is but lately, that her government and her 
politicians regarded and treated the universal diffusion of 
knowledge, — the instruction of the lower classes, particularly 
— as a critical, not to say pernicious theory. " About eleven 
years ago," said Mr. Brougham, in the speech to which I 
have referred, " Mr. Whitbread broached the subject of the 
education of the poor. His benevolent views met with great 
opposition. He had strong prejudices to encounter even in 
men of high character and talents, ft is melancholy and even 
humiliating to reflect that Mr. Wyndham, himself the model 
of a finely educated man, should have stood forward as the 
active opponent of national education. He was followed by 
persons who, with the servile zeal of imitators, outstripped their 
master, and maintained, that if you taught ploughmen and me- 
chanics to read, they would thenceforward disdain to work."* 

1 1 . In partitioning the vast region of North America, among 
mercantile companies and rapacious courtiers, the monarchs 
of England, were wholly unmindful of the interests of the 
aborigines. The soil was granted, as though the Indians had 
no claim or want, distinct from those of the wild beast; and 
if the settlers had placed them on the same footing, expelled 
them alike from their lairs, and hunted them together to de- 
struction, they might have pleaded the tacit warrant of the 
mother country. But they acted in a very different spirit from 
that in which the royal patents were framed: — they purchased 
with their own estates, the supposed title of the natives. Al- 
most every foot of territory occupied by the whites in New 
England, at the distance of many years from the formation 
of their communities, and until wars of extermination were 
commenced against them by the Indians, was thus acquired. 
Abundant and well merited honour has been paid to Penn, for 
his conscientious dealings in this respect. As much is due, 

* "Nobody can have forg'otten tlie murmurs and dissonant clamours, 
with which the first proposal for communicating the blessings of edu- 
cation to the great body of the people was lately received."— Edin- 
burgh Review, 1814, 

" We well remember, when all attempts to educate the lower classes, 
were at once clamoured down by the real or pretended apprehensions, 
that such education would disturb the order of society, and would only 
render the poor discontented and impatient."— Bell's Weekly Messen- 
ger, December, 1818 



70 CHARACTER AND MERITS 

PARTI, however, to the founders of the New England colonies; to 
"^-^^v^^^ those of Maryland, New Jersey, and North Carolina. The 
Plymouth colony in 1621, and that of Massachusetts in 1629; 
in 163d, Calvert and his band of Roman Catholics, and Roger 
Williams and his associates, in 1634, set the example of that 
Christian course, which is so properly admired and extolled in 
Penn. " To lay a foundation for a firm and lasting friend- 
ship," says Dummer, after the historians, " they calltd as- 
semblies of the Indians, to enquire who had a right to dis- 
pose of their lands, and being told that it was their sachems 
or princes, they thereupon agreed with them for what districts 
they bought, publicly, and in open market." It became, 
finally, in all the settlements undertaken by the great proprie- 
tors, a fundamental principle, that territory was to be purchas- 
ed from the aborigines; and this principle did not spring from 
the plantation office at Whitehall, but was rendered necessary 
to the interests of the proprietors by the example just men- 
tioned, and the dispositions of the settlers. 

The civilization and conversion of the Indians early shared 
the attention and the resources of the middle and northern co- 
lonists, and of the southern planters also, though in a less de- 
gree.* In 1646, the general court of Massachusetts passed 
an act to encourage the propagation of the gospel among the 
natives, and associations of clergymen were formed for the 
purpose, under its auspices. The work was then prosecuted 
with apostolical ardour and devotion, — upon the true maxim 
in the case — that " the Indians must be civilized, in order to 
being christianized." The attention of the English nation 
was not excited to the subject, until accounts were published 
in England, of the remarkable progress of the New England 
missionaries. In 1649, Winslow, the agent of the united 
colonies, at the British court, extorted from the parliament, 
by pressing instances and glowing exhortations, an act, which 
incorporated a society for the benefit of the " poor heathens," 
and which recommended to the good people of England and 
Wales to contribute to its pious objects by a general collection, 
inasmuch as the "New England people had exhausted their 
estates in laying the foundations of many hopeful towns and 
colonies in a desolate wilderness." 

* See Diimmei-'s Defence of the Charters: and Burk's History of 
Virginia, vol. ii. ch. ii. The regulations of the assembly of Virijuiia, in 
1654, were replete with humanity as well as j^ood sense. Here, as well 
as in New PJng'land, to preserve the Indians from being overreaclied, 
all persons were forbidden to purchase land from them, without the ap- 
probation of the assembly. 



OP THE COLONISTS. 71 

Although letters were published besides, at the solicitation SECT. II. 
of the American agents, from the two universities of Oxford v-^-^v-^^ 
and Cambridge, calling upon the ministers of Britain to stir up 
their congregations to the promotion of so glorious an under- 
taking, yet, according to Hutchinson, great opposition was 
expressed to the collection in England; and it went on so 
slowly that an attempt was made to raise a sum out of the 
army.* This, too, yielded but a poor harvest. The evangeli- 
cal charity of England and Wales kindled, however, as the 
fame of the New England missions increased, and at length, 
on (he accession of Charles II., the society, incorporated in 
1649, found itself in possession of six or seven hundred pounds 
a year. But as this income arose out of an act of the Common- 
wealth-parliament^ it was in danger of being confiscated by the 
crown, and was saved at last, only through the interest which 
some of the patrons of the institution happened to possess at 
court. This fund was committed to some of the old magistrates 
and ministers of New England, and the historians concur in the 
allegation, that never was one of the nature more faithfully ap- 
plied. Notwithstanding, it was near being wrested from them, 
in the time of James II., and transferred to much less scrupu- 
lous custody, by authority of the archbishop of Canterbury. 

Meantime the assemblies of New England allotted tracts 
of land to such Indians as were likely to become Christians; 
supplied them with building materials and household utensils; 
and assisted in every way, the unremitting efforts of the mis- 
sionary societies. The bible was translated into the language 
of the natives, and published in 1661. Schools were opened in 
the Indian settlements; the children taught to read; and such of 
these as displayed capacity, placed in the grammar schools of 
iiiC colonists, and even at the university of Cambridge. To 
furnish some idea of what was accomplished, I will extract 
one or two short passages on the subject, from Hutchinson. 
" In 1660, there were ten Indian towns of such as were called 
" Praying Indians, in Massachusetts. — In 1687, as appears by 
*' a letter of Dr. Increase Mather, there were four Indian as- 
" semblies in that province, besides the principal church at 
"Natick. In Plymouth, besides the principal church at 
" Mashpee, there were five assemblies in that vicinity, and a 
" large congregation at Saconet. There were also six different 
" societies, probably but small, with an Indian teacher to each, 
" between the last mentioned and Cape Cod; one church at 
" Nantucket, and three at Martha's Vineyard. There were 
" in all six assemblies formed into a church state, having offi- 

* Vol. i. chap. i. 



i^ CHAKACTER AND MERITS 

PART I. '^ cers, and the ordinances duly administered, and sixteen as- 
^«^"v-^ " semblies which met together for the worship of God."* 

On these heads, of the occupation of the soil and the treat- 
ment of the Indians— our forefathers have the good fortune to 
be defended in the two works, to which the defamation of the 
American character may be said to have been specially allot- 
ted: I mean the Annals of Chalmers and the Quarterly Review. 
There is so much solidity, and, what is still more rare, so 
much liberality, in their observations, that I may be excused 
for transcribing them at length. 

" Man," says Chalmers, •' having a right to the world from the gift of 
the beneficent Creator, must possess and use the general estate ac- 
cording to the grant, which commanded him to multiply and to subsist 
by labour: and little would the earth have been peopled or cultivated. 
Lad men continued to live by hunting or fishing, or the mere produc- 
tions of nature. The roving of the erratic tribes over wide extended 
deserts, does not form a possession which excludes the subsequent oc- 
cupancy of emigrants from countries overstocked with inhabitants. 
The paucity of their numbers, and their mode of life, render them 
unable to fulfil the great purposes of the grant. Consistent, therefore, 
with the great charter to mankind, they may be confined within certain 
limits. Their rights to the privileges of men, nevertheless, continue 
the same. And the colonists, who conciliated the affections of the 
aborigines, and gave a consideration for their territory, have acquired 
the praise due to humanity and justice."! 

" As for the usurpation of territory from the natives, by the Ameri- 
can st?.tes, he must be," says the Quarterly Review,t " a feeble moralist, 
who regards tijat as an evil: the same pi-inciple upon which that usur- 
pation is condemned, would lead to the nonsensical opinion of the Bra- 
mins, that agriculture is an unrighteous employment, because worms 
must sometimes be cut by the ploughshare and the spade. It is the 
order of nature, that beasts should give place to man, and among men 
the savage to the civilized ; and no where has this order been carried 
into effect with so little violence as in North America. Sir Thomas 
Moore admits it to be a justifiable cause of war, even in Utopia, if a 
people, who have territory to spare, will not cede it to those who are 
in want of room. The Quakers of Pennsylvania have proved the prac- 
ticability of a more perfect system than he had imagined, and the treaty 
which the excellent founder of the province made with the Indians, 
has never been broken. If the conduct of the other states towards the 
natives be fairly examined, there will be found a great aggregate of in- 
dividual wickedness on the part of the traders and back-settlers, but 
little which can be considered as national guilt. They have never beer, 
divided among the colonists like cerfs ; they have never been consumed 
in mines nor in indigo works ; they have never been hunted down for 
slaves, nor has war ever been made upon them for the purpose of con- 
quest, though the infernal cruelties which they exercise upon their 
prisoners might excuse and almost justify a war of extermination." 

* For the evangelical labours generally of the Anglo-Americans among 
the Indians, see the first volume of a late English work, entitled, "His- 
tory of the Pi'opagation of Christianity among the Heathen, since the 
Reformation, by the Rev. William Brown." — 2 vols. London. See, also, 
1st vol. Mass. Hist. Collections, for an ample account, by Daniel Gookin, 
general superintendant of all the Indians, &c. (1764.) 
t Book I. + No. 4. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 



73 



1^. — The physical economy of the settlements kept pace SECT.ll. 
with the moral, and is not less the subject of admiration with "^-^^'-'^i- 
a few of the more liberal among the English writers. Of this 
description are the authors of the Modern Universal History, 
whose account of the North American Colonies is among the 
best parts of their useful work. In tracing the early progress of 
Pennsylvania, they dwell with complacency upon '■'■ the stu- 
pendous prosperity of a commonwealth so lately planted, and 
so flourishing by pacific measures." When they have brought 
the history of New England down to tl e treaty of Utrecht, 
(1713,) they speak thus of her condition. 

" The inhabitants of New England, at the peace of Utrecht, 
' to their native love of liberty, added now the polite arts of 
I''""; industry was embellished by elegance; and what would 
be hardly credible in antient Greece and Rome, in less than 
fourscore years, a colony almost imassisled by its mother country^ 
arose in the wilds of America, that if transplanted to Europe, 
and rendered an independent government, would have made 
no mean figure amidst her sovereign states."* 

If we ascend with the same accurate reporters to an earlier 
period in the career of the people of New England, we shall 
be no less edified. 

" In 1642, the number of English capable to bear arms 
in New England, were computed to be belween 7 or 8000. 
At this time 30 towns and villages were planted, above 40 
ministers had houses, and public works of all kinds were 
erected at public expense. All this could not have beeen done 
but through the almost incredible industry of the inhabitants, 
which had by this time rendered their country a near resem- 
blance of England. Fields were hedged in; gardens, orchards, 
meadows, and pasture grounds were laid out, and all the im- 
provements of husbandry took place, particularly the sowing 
of corn and feeding of cattle. As to the commercial part of 
the inhabitants, they shipped off vast quantities of fish for 
Portugal, and the Straits; besides supplying other places; 
England particularly, Scotland and Ireland. They exported 
bread and beef to the sugar islands, with oil and lumber of 
all kinds, some of which they sent to the mother country; 
and what is still more surprising, they carried on a great trade 
in ship building. "f 

Some of the features in the physical condition of the Colo- 
nies, noted in the Official Reports, which were made on the 
subject, to Charles II. must have excited either incredulity or 

* Vol. xxxix, I Ibid. 

Vol. I.— K 



■74 CHARACTER AND MERITS, &C. 

PART I. envy in his disquiet council. " We leave every man," said the 
^^'^'^^^ Governor of Rhode Island, " to walk in religion as God shall 
persuade his heart; and as for beggars and vagabonds, we 
have none among us." " The worst cottages of New Eng- 
land," said another inspector, " are lofted: there are no beg- 
gars, and not three persons are put to death annually for civil 
offences." This representation would have been equally true 
of the middle colonies. I will not place by the side of it the 
cotemporary condition of Ireland, under the immediate domi- 
nion of Britain, when the spectacle of what exists there at 
the present day is too hideous to be endured by the imagina- 
tion. But it may be well to furnish a trifling specimen of the 
state of some of the agricultural districts of England; and this 
shall be drawn from the journal of the faithful Evelyn. 

" August 2, 1664. — Went to Uppingham, the shire town 
of Rutland; pretty, and well built of stone, which is a rarity 
in that part of England, where most of the rural villages are 
built of mud, and the people living as wretchedly as the most 
impoverished parts of Prance, which they much resemble, 
being idle and sluttish. The country (especially Leicester- 
shire) much in common; the gentry free drinkers." 

" August 14, 1664. — Lay at Nottingham. Here I ob- 
served divers to live in the rocks and caves," &c.* 

* Memoirs, vol. i. 



75 



SECTION III. 



OF THE DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED BY THE COLONISTS. 

1 . The cheering scene which the provinces thus exhi- SECT. III. 
bited in the beginning of the eighteenth century; the maturity ^>^'^^'^*>^ 
and stability of their institutions; the sedateness, humanity, 
and piety, of their character, are rendered the more creditable 
and remarkable, by the disadvantages and difficulties of vari- 
ous kinds with which they had to contend. It may be said of 
them, without exaggeration, that they were the associations of 
men, — of all that have existed of civilized origin, — in whom a 
backwardness in the arrangements and improvements which 
constitute the dignity and comfort of social life; a total neglect 
of the higher arts of civilization, and the pursuits of philan- 
thropy; a fierce, relentless, and even ruthless character, would 
have been most natural and excusable. It was their pe- 
culiar lot, at one and the same time, to clear and cultivate 
a wilderness; to erect habitations and procure sustenance; to 
struggle with a new and rigorous climate; to bear up against 
all the bitter recollections inseparable from distant and lonely 
exile; to defend their liberties from the jealous tyranny and 
bigotry of the mother country; to be perpetually assailed by a 
savage foe, " the most subtle and the most formidable of any 
people on the face of the earth"* — a foe that made war the 
main business of life, and waged it with forms and barbarities 
unknown to the experience, and superlatively terrible to the 
imagination, of a European. 

The general situation of the first emigrants in the midst of 
a wilderness, and surrounded by an enemy of this description, 
can be imaged without difficulty, and does not require to be 
described for those to whom our common histories are familiar. 
The pictures drawn therein have been realized in part before 
our eyes, in the settlement of our western wilds. I say in 
part, because, although the immediate labours and dangers may 
have been, in some of the modern instances, as great, yet, the 
distressing, paralyzing influences for the mind, the duration of 

* Colonel Bane, in the Hou-se of Commons 



76 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

PART I. the principal ills, and the obstacles in the way of ultimate 
"^-^"""'"'^^ success, appear much less in the comparison. The Annals of 
Chalmers, Stith's History of Virginia, and Trumbull's Con- 
necticut, furnish a particularly striking and full detail of those 
circumstances of original adversity common to most of the 
colonies, which justify any warmth of encomuim on their 
fortitude, or of admiration at their progress. Well might 
Lord Chatham exclaim, in 1774, "viewing our fellow sub- 
jects in America, in their original forlorn, and now flour- 
ishing state, they may be cited as illustrious instances to in- 
struct the world — what great exertions mankind will make, 
when left to the free exercise of their own powers." Hav- 
ing before me the accounts of the historians just mentioned, 
and present to my mind the various obstacles upon which 
I am about to touch, I am filled with new wonder at the re- 
sults sketched in my last section. I feel with additional 
force, the justice of the beautiful commemoration, which 
the contemplation of them drew from Mr. Burke, in 1764, 
and which that bright intelligence uttered, not merely as an 
orator ambitious of the meed of eloquence, but as a philoso- 
pher attentive to the ordinary march of human affairs, and 
the ordinary efficacy of human powers. " Nothing in the 
history of mankind," said he, " is like the progress of the 
American Colonies. For my part, I never cast an eye on 
their flourishing commerce, and their cultivated and commo- 
dious life, but they seem to me rather antient nations grown 
to perfection through a long series of fortunate events, and a 
train of successful industry, accumulating wealth in many 
centuries, than the colonies of yesterday; than a set of miser- 
able outcasts, a few years ago, not so much sent as thrown 
out, on the bleak and barren shore of a desolate wilderness, 
three thousand miles from all civilized intercourse."* 

2. It is conceded by the historians of every party, that as 
far as the mother country was able, in the confusion of her 
domestic affliirs, or condescended, in the plenitude of her 
greatness, to bend her att' ntion to the colonies, she pursued 
towards them until the revolution of 1668 at least, a course 
of direct oppression. Tiie administration of the chartered 
companies, of the proprielary governors in general, and of the 
councils and executive representaiives of the S'uarfs, is ac- 
knowledged on all hands, to have been biU'densome and mis- 
chievous.! So far from promoting, it tended to impede the 



* Speed) on American Taxation. 

f See particularly Cliuimers — passim. 



BY THE COLONISTS. 



77 



growth, and break the spirit of the plantations. It was not, sect. III. 
therefore, by favour, but in spite of their political connexion ^-^^v^ 
with Great Britain, that they preserved their liberiies, and 
became what they were at the end of the seventeenth century. 
The condition of the Carolinas, of New York, and New Jer- 
sey, under the proprietary rule, — of Virginia in the hands of the 
London company, and of the Stuart governors, — of this pro- 
vince and Maryland, when in the gripe of the Common- 
wealth, — of New Hampshire in that of Mason's agents, and 
of New England at large during the vice-royalty of Andros, — 
are sufficiently known to all who have read our annals. 

As soon as the long parliament was settled, it manifested 
a determination to assert and exercise an unlimited authority 
in the colonies; and by its act of navigation, and other regu- 
lations conceived in the same spirit, threw over them a set of 
fetters which did not cripple them entirely, only because they 
were loosely worn, and sometimes laid aside altogether, in 
defiance of the peering jealousy of the metropolitan govern- 
ment. The community of religious opinion, — the great bond 
of union in those days — and a marked predilection for the 
cause of the Parliament, obtained for New England, no real 
concession or substantial favour — no legal exemption from the 
navigation act. She escaped its full pressure, not by the par- 
tiality of Cromwell, as has been asserted, but by her own 
sturdy resolution to be free. Chalmers relates, in an an^ry 
tone, that she foiled the Parliament, and outwitted the Pro- 
tector, whom, in fact, while she addressed him in terms of 
obeisance, she always cautiously avoided to acknowledge in 
form. Virginia refused to receive the navigation act of 
1661, and was liable by her devotion to the royal side, to the 
particular displeasure of the Comnionwealth: But we may 
cite, as a sample of the prevailing temper of mind in Eng- 
land, with regard to all the colonies, the instruction given to 
the fleet, which the parliament despatched for the reduction 
of that province, " to employ every act of hostility" in case 
of refractoriness — "to set (vee such servants and slaves of 
masters who should oppose the parliamentary government, as 
would serve as soldiers to subdue them"* — a parental expe- 
dient, shewing the antiquity of the feeling, which prompted 
the observation of Govei-nnr Liuleton in the debate of the 
British Parliameni of the 26th of October, 1775—^' that if a 
few regiments were sen! to the southern colonies of America, 
the negroes would rise and embrue their hands in the blood of 
their masters." 

* Chalmers, c. v. Annals. 



78 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

PART I. The courageous loyalty of Virginia, although acknowledged 
^--^'^v-^*-' and applauded on the restoration, turned still less to her ad- 
vantage than the republicanism of New England. A scheme 
of restriction, and a train of measures, more prejudicial and 
galling than those of Cromwell, were pursued by Charles II. 
and his successor, towards those who boasted with truth " that 
they were the last of the King's subjects who renounced, and the 
first who resumed their allegiance." " With the restoration," 
says Chalmers, " began a series of evils which long afflicted, 
and well nigh ruined the plantation of Virginia." One of 
these evils was, the distribution among certain favourite ad- 
herents of Charles II. in England, of a large portion of the 
soil, including cultivated estates, held by every right which 
could vest indefeasible property. " Virginia," says the writer 
whom I have just quoted, " beheld the Jforthern Mck, con- 
taining one half of the whole, given away to strangers, who 
had shared neither the danger nor expenses of the original 
settlement."* 

A spoliation no less iniquitous was attempted, and partly 
accomplished by Andros, in 1688, in New England. There, 
on the lawless abolition of all the charters, a declaration 
followed, that the titles of the colonists to their lands had 
become void in consequence. By this monstrous fiction of 
tyranny, the oldest proprietors were summoned to take out, 
at a heavy cost, new patents for estates acquired by pur- 
chase from the Indians; j)Ossessed for near sixty years; de- 
fended against the inroads of a barbarous enemy, at the 
hazard of life, and improved with incessant toil and im- 
mense expense. Hutchinson remarks,! that according to the 
computation then made, all the personal estate of Massachu- 
setts would not have paid the charge of the new patents re- 
quired in that colony. A scheme of despotism and rapine so 
exorbitant, could not be long prosecuted with a people that 
had made such sacrifices for freedom, and had lost nothing of 
their pristine fervor. It was quickly terminated by the 
popular insurrection at Boston, already noticed, which deposed 
all its abettors, and extinguished the government of James in 
New England. — What is called the rebellion of Bacon, in the 
annals of Virginia, sprung from grievances of equal injustice, 
and wanted, I am inclined to think, nothing but ultimate suc- 
cess, to make it, in the estimation of all, equally noble with 
the bold and characteristic movement of Massachusetts-! 

* Aiiiiais, cli. iv. 
■j- Vol. i. c. iii. 

I This opinion is fully sustained by Burk's narrative of Bacon's rebel- 
lion. — See vol. ii. ch. iv. History of Virginia. 



BY THE COLONISTS. 79 

3. All the thirteen colonies, with the exception of Georgia? sect. ill. 
were established and had attained to considerable strength, ^-^-v-^ 
without the slightest aid from the treasury of the mother coun- 
try. Whatever was expended in the acquisiiion of territory 
from the Indians, proceeded from the private resources of the 
European adventurers. Neither the crown, nor the parlia- 
ment of England, made any compensation to the original mas- 
ters of the soil, or could lay claim to a share in the creation of 
the rich stockand fair landscape, which so soon bore testimony 
to the industry and intelligence of the planters. The set- 
tlement of the province of Massachusetts Bay alone, cost 
^200,000 — an enormous sum at the era in which it was ef- 
fected. Lord Baltimore expended ^40,000 for his contingent 
in the establishment of his colony in Maryland: on that of 
Virginia immense wealth was lavished; and we are told b\' 
Trumbull, that the first planters of Connecticut consumed great 
estates in purchasing lands from the Indians, and making set- 
tlements, in that province, besides large sums in the purchase 
of their patents, and the right of pre-emption. 

Within a few years after their debarkation, the settlers of 
Virginia, of New England, and of the Carolinas, were assailed 
by warlike tribes, decuple their number, and furiously bent on 
their destruction. But the government of the mother country 
extended no succour to them in these contests;* she furnished 
neither troops nor money; built no fortifications; entered into 
no negociations for them; she manifested little sympathy or in- 
terest in the fate of her offspring. The sense of extreme dan- 
ger, and the despair of aid from abroad, gave birth, in 1643, 
in New England, to the confederacy, which I have already 
noticed, and without which, in all probability, the colonies 
of that region would have been either extirpated, or miserably 
crippled. Some of the most considerable of the Indian wars 
were immediately brought upon them by the rashness and 
cupidity of the royal governors. That, for instance, which 
is styled king William's war, — memorable in the annals of 
New Hampshire particularly — was owing to a wanton, pre- 

* This, and the facts stated in the preceding paragraph, were ac- 
knowledged in acts of parliament, and repeatedly asserted to the British 
government by the colonists, in their petitions, before as well as dur- 
ing the eighteenth century. Franklin told the House of Commons, in 
1766, on his examination — " The Americans defended themselves when 
they were but a handful, and the Indians much more numerous. They 
continually gained ground, and drove the Indians over the mountains, 
without any troops sent to their assistance from Great Britain." The 
number of Indian warriors in New England on the arrival of the first 
settlers, has been computed at eighteen thousand. 



80 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

PART I. datory expedition of Andros, in 1688, against the possessions 
^■^"v-^^ of a French individual, situate between Penobscot and Nova 
Scotia. 

It is a remarkable trait in the history of the New England 
settlers, that they did not seek, and appear to have been even 
unwilling to receive, assistance from the mother country. 
The magnanimity of these jealous exiles is placed in full 
contrast with the selfishness of the British Court, by the letter 
of reproof for their backwardness in solicitation, of the date 
of 1676, from the earl of Anglesey, which Hutchinson has 
copied into his history.* "I received your letter," said the 
royal privy-councillor to the governor of Massachusetts, " in- 
timating the troubles unexpectedly brought upon you by the 
Indians. I must chide you, and that whole people of New 
England, that (as if you were independent of my master's 
crown, needed not his protection, or had deserved ill of him, 
as some have not been wanting to suggest, and use testimony 
thereof,) from the first hour of God's stretching his hand 
against you to this time, you have not as yet, as certainly be- 
came you, made your addresses to the king's majesty, or some 
of his ministers, &c. I can write but by guess; yet it is not 
altogether groundlessly reported, that you are too tenacious of 
what is necessary for your preservation; — that you are poor^ 
and yet proud. I know his majesty hath power sufficient as 
well as will, to help his colonies in distress, as others have 
experienced, and you may in good time. He can send ships 
to help you, &c. and there are many who will not only be in- 
tercessors to the throne of grace, but to God'^s vicegerent also, 
if you are not wanting to yourselves, and failing in that duti- 
ful application which subjects ought to make to their sove- 
reigns in such cases." 

Another striking illustration of the comparative dispositions 
of the parties, is afforded in the fact, which we have upon 
the authority of Hutchinson,! — that the collections made in 
the colony of Massachusetts for the relief of the sufferers by 
the great fire in London, and on other occasions of foreign 
calamity, at least equalled the whole sum bestowed upon her 
from abroad, from the first settlement, to the abrogation of her 
charter by James 11. 

While the people of New England were providing for their 
own safety, with consummate judgment, and performing pro- 
digies of valour in innumerable rencounters with the enemy, 
they had not even the consolation of escaping the reproach 

* Vol. i. chap. ii. ■\ Ibid. 



BY THE COLONISTS. 81 

of pusillanimity, from the mother country. The court of James SECT. Ill, 
II. besides withholding assistance, on the pretext that it was ^^^^v^-' 
not implored, taxed them with wanting hearts to make use of 
their means of defence. A part of the nation concurred in 
this injustice; which, even at this distance of time, causes the 
breast to swell with indignation, when the bold expeditions 
of these colonists, the prodigal effusion of their blood, and the 
hardships of their warfare, are passed in review. This 
emotion is not allayed, as we read, in descending through 
their history, that on the occasion of the bill, introduced into 
the British Parliament, in 1715, for the destruction of all the 
charter governments, the first of the charges brought against 
them was, " the having neglected the defence of the inhabi- 
tants !" To convey an idea of the severity and destructive- 
ness of the hostilities to which they were constantly exposed, 
I will transcribe from the Annals of Holmes, the summary 
which he makes, of the evils of the war waged by the New 
England Confederacy, in lt)75, with Philip, sachem of the 
Wampanoags. " In this short, but tremendous war, about 
six hundred of the inhabitants of New England, composing its 
principal strength, were either killed in battle, or murdered by 
the enemy; twelve or thirteen towns were entirely destroyed; 
and about six hundred buildings, chiefly dwelling houses, were 
burnt. In addition to these calamities, the colonies contracted 
an enormous debt." 

Hutchinson states, that the accounts which were transmitted 
to England, of the distresses of the province of Massachusetts 
Bay during this contest, although they might excite compas- 
sion in the breasts of some^ yet were improved by others, 
to render the colonies more obnoxious."* In fact, in the 
very height of the calamity — at the moment when New 
England was putting forth all her strength for the retention of 
the soil, — the merchants and manufacturers of the mother 
country were clamorous, and the committee of plantations 
tasked, for measures of rigour against her, on the ground that 
her " inhabitants had encouraged foreigners to traffic with 
them, and supplied the other plantations with those foreign 
productions which ought only to have been sent to England." 
While the earth was yet reeking with the carnage of the six 
hundred brave yeomen, and the smoke still issued from the 
ruins of the six hundred dwellings, a general scheme of op- 
pression and disfranchisement was projected at the British 
Court. It prescribed, without delay, that no Mediterranean 

* Vol. i. c. ii. 
Vol. I — L 



83 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

PART I. passes should be granted to New England, to protect her veS' 
v^'N-**-^ sels against the Turks^ till it was seen what dependence she 
would acknowledge on his Britannic majesty, and whether his 
custom houses would be received." 

Most of the colonies had to subdue, and nearly to extermi- 
nate, in the outset, fierce and populous nations, aiming, within 
their bosom, at their utter destruction. Almost every indivi- 
dual of the settlers became a soldier, and was kept perpetually 
on the alert: the musket accompanied the plough, and the 
employment of these may be said to have been unremittingly 
alternate. It is not too much to affirm, that there was more 
of military effort and suffering on the part of New England, 
for the first half century of her history, than among any equal 
number of the civilized inhabitants of Europe within the same 
period. The colonists did not merely await, and repel with 
great slaughter, the assaults of their indefatigable enemy; 
but they marched to their head quarters, attacked them in 
their fortifications, and pursued them through all their re- 
cesses. To campaigns of wasting hardship, and sanguinary 
strife, were added general massacres, prepared by the In- 
dians, with the utmost refinement of dissimulation, during 
the intervals of their professed submission. We are told 
by Dummer, that, in his time, (1715,) many in England^ 
who were unable to deny that the colonists had defended 
themselves, without being burdensome to the crown, " en- 
deavoured to depreciate their conquests^ as gained over a rude 
and barbarous people, unexercised to arms." The general 
reply of the eloquent advocate, on this head, contains a true 
representation of the case, and teaches us a solemn duty. " If 
" it be considered, that the New England forces contended 
" with enemies bloody in their nature and superior in number, 
" that they followed them in deep morasses; that the assailants 
" were not provided with cannon, nor could approach by 
" trenches, but advanced on level ground: and if to this be 
" added, the vast fatigues of their campaigns, where officers 
" and soldiers lay on the snow, without any shelter over their 
'' heads, in the most rigorous winters; I say, if a just conside- 
" ration be had of these things, envy itself must acknowledge 
" that their enterprises were hardy and their successes glori- 
" ous. And though the brave commanders who led on these 
" troops — and most of ihem died in the bed of honour, rimst 
" not shine in the British annals, yet their memory ought to 
" be sacred in their own country, and there at least be trans- 
•' mitted to the latest posterity."* 

* Defence of the Charters. 



BY THE COLONISTS. 83 

, At the period of the accession of William to the British SECT.m. 
throne, this scourge of a savage foe no longer existed in the ^^^^v^^ 
heart of the settlements; but obstacles to civil labour, and 
causes of inordinate mortality, of the same kind, were even 
multiplied. From the year 1690, to the peace of Paris, in 
1763, the colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia, were 
engaged in almost unremitting hostilities with the aborigines 
on their borders. Their whole western frontier was a scene 
of havoc and desolation. After the establishment of the French 
at Fort Du Quesne, in 1754, the tribes of the Ohio assailed 
and laid waste the western settlements of the middle provinces; 
and it is calculated that the colonies lost altogether by war, 
not less than twenty thousand adults, in the interval from that 
period to the peace of 1763. 

About the year 1690, the French in the north, and the 
Spaniards in the south, began to act as the instigaiors and 
auxiliaries of the savages, and continued for seventy-three 
years to be the instruments of infinite distress and mischief 
to the Anglo-Americans. Their enmity was occasioned by 
the connexion of the latter wilh Great Britain; and their 
hostilities arose directly, and date exactly, from her quarrels 
with France. It is doubtful whether, if that connexion 
had not existed, they would have molested their neighbours. 
In 1644, the season of the total dereliction of the British pro- 
vinces by the mother country, a formal treaty of amity was 
concluded between the French of Acadie, and the commis- 
sioners of the united colonies of New England. The French 
of Canada sent an agent, in 1647, to solicit aid from Massa- 
chusetts against the Mohawks; which was refused from an un- 
willingness to assist in removing, what might serve as a barrier 
between the English and French colonies, in case of a rupture 
■between the two mother countries. A year after, when it was 
proposed by New England, to the governor and council of 
Canada, that the parties should contract an engagement to 
maintain perpetual peace, whatever might be the relations of 
the parent states, the French entered with alacrity info a ne- 
gotiation for the purpose. It failed only because they required 
the English colonists to aid them against the Iroquois; and they 
renewed it themselves by plenipotentiaries, at a short interval 
of time, without success.* These facts warrant the supposi- 
tion, that, but for their allegiance to the British crown, the 
provinces would have been able to avert the animosities which 
proved their severest affliction, and even, perhaps, to make 
auxiliaries of the French and Spanish dependencies. It seems, 

* Universal History, vol. sxxix. p. 448. 



84 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

PART. I. moreover, upon an attentive review of the history of France, 
^ii^-v-^^ during the seventeenth century, almost certain, that she would 
not herself have attempted, in that period, to arrest their pro- 
gress: Afterwards, they might have defied her powers. 

They could, at all events, hold the mother country re- 
sponsible, for the long train of ills, which they suffered from 
the neighbourhood of the French, by referring to the treaty of 
1632, between Charles I. and Louis XIII. On this occasion, 
Charles restored to France, absolutely and without demarca- 
tion of limits, " all the places possessed by the English in 
New France, Lacadie, and Canada, particularly Port Royal, 
Quebec, and Cape Breton." An officer, in the British service, 
Sir David Kirk had, under a commission from the crown, made 
himself master of Quebec, in 1628, during the war between 
England and France. " To this fatal treaty," says a British 
writer,* " may be truly ascribed all the disputes we have had 
"ever since with France, concerning North America; our 
" king and his ministers being sadly outwitted by Richlieu's 
" superior dexterity. The three places delivered up to France 
" were not, it is true, thought of the same importance then, 
'' as they are since found to be; yet it was very obvious, even 
" then, to any considerate observer, that as those French co- 
•' Ionics should increase in people and commerce, those places 
" would be of the utmost importance to France, and very 
" dangerous to England; but more especially, our parting with 
" Port Royal and Cape Breton is never to be excused, as the 
" possession of them by the French gave them a fair pretext 
'' for settling on the south side of the river St. Lawrence, and 
" thereby claiming the rest of Nova Scotia bordering on Eng-, 
" land; ^vhereas, had the French been strictly confined to their 
"original settlements on the north side of that river, the coun- 
"try is so bad and the trade thereof so indifferent, that before 
" now they would probably have quite abandoned them." 

4. At a very early period, the mother country cast the re- 
proach which she has constantly repeated, against the colo- 
nists, of provoking the Indian wars, and acquiring the domi- 
nion of the' Indian territory by fraud as well as force. Duni- 
mtr's Defence of the Charters, written at the commencement 
of the last century, treats of this " unworthy aspersion," as the 
honest author styles it, and as he proves it to be, by unanswer- 
able suggestions. With respect to New England particularly, 

* Macpherson's Annals, vol. ii. p. 372, Chalmers holds nearly the 



BY THE COLONISTS. 86 

Tvliat he asserts is susceptible of abundant evidence — that " she SECT. ill. 
sought to gain the natives by strict justice in her dealings with ^^-^-v-^ 
them, as well as by all the endearments of kindness and huma- 
nity;" that "she did not commence hostilities, nor even take up 
arms of defence, until she found by experience that no other 
means would prevail" — and, " that nothing could oblige the 
Indians to peace and friendship, after they conceived a jealousy 
of the growing powers of the English." The congress of the 
New England league was particularly authorized, to prescribe 
rules for the conduct of the colonists, towards the natives; and 
its legislation on this head, was tempered with as much for- 
bearance and mercy, as a due regard for self-preservation, 
would possibly admit. So rigid were its enactments against 
private violence, and so strict was the execution of them, that 
we have an instance of three settlers being put to death at the 
same time, for the murder of a single Indian. 

The New England colonies, far from being exasperated, as 
was natural, by the desperate and harassing nature of their 
struggle with the aborigines, into an obdurate resentment and 
mortal hate against the whole race, exerted, as I have al- 
ready had occasion to state, unbounded zeal and generosity, 
in improving the condition, and refining the character, of 
that portion of them whom they were able to propitiate. 
I believe the other provinces, to whom the British charge was 
extended, and who have been more particularly the object 
of it, in recent times, to be capable of vindication; and I am 
convinced, that the American writers, who have maintained 
the contrary doctrine, have either suffered themselves to be 
hoodwinked by prejudice, or have not traced our Indian rela- 
tions in the detail requisite for the formation of a sound opi- 
nion. But if the point were not determinable by history, we 
might at once infer from the general aims and obvious interests, 
the weakness and the wants, of the early colonists, that they 
were not the aggressors in the Indian wars. Be this, for the pre- 
sent, as it may, it cannot be denied, that after hostilities had be- 
gun to rage; after the savage had been roused to distrust and ven- 
geance — the case of the settlers was one of the most absolute 
self defence — of extreme necessity. |In the contest which I 
have noticed, between Philip and New England, and in the 
similar struggles in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, the 
very existence of these provinces, respectively, was at stake, 
and often in suspense. Those English writers who so loudly 
inveigh against the North American colonies for their treat- 
ment of the Indians, may be defied to detect in their annals, 
an expedient for the destruction of their inveterate enemy, like 



86 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

PART I. that of the employment of the Spanish bloodhounds in Jamaica, 
v-^~v-^ to subdue the Maroon negroes, in the year 1730, and again to- 
wards the close of the eighteenth century. Certainly, there is 
no argument urged by Dallas* or Bryan Edwards, to justify 
the recourse, on the part of the government of that island, to 
such fell auxiliaries, which would not have been available for 
the people of New England; which might not, indeed, receive 
additional force from their situation.! The pride of manhood,:]: 
tlie innate sympathies of kind, and the influence of religion, 
with the hardy and virtuous Puritans, must have rendered it 
impossible for them to imitate, while they professed to abhor, 
the worst of the atrocities practised by the Spaniards on the 
aborigines of the West Indies. § 

But, in order to convict the accusers, of a guilt of inhuma- 
nity, far deeper than any with which they have ventured to 
charge their " kinsmen of America," it is not necessary to 
refer to their alliance, in Jamaica, with the Spanish chasseurs, 
or to their military administration in Hindostan. I would 
challenge the closest scrutiny into our history, for a parallel to 
the measure which the British commanders adopted, after the 
reduction of Nova Scotia, in 1755, of transplanting, and dis- 
persing through the British colonies, the French inhabitants 
of that province. This is a transaction in which the point at 
issue was, not existence, but the more easy retention of a con- 
quest; in which the victims were, not blood-thirsty and un- 
tameable savages, or ferocious banditti, who had aimed at the 
extermination, and whose presence seemed incompatible with 
the safety, of the conquerors; — but " a mild, frugal, industrious, 
pious people," of whom only a few had committed any offence, 
and who, generally, could be taxed with no more, than having 
indirectly favoured the cause, and preferred the dominion, of 
their own nation. It has always appeared to me, that the 
reason of state was never more cheaply urged, or more odiously 



* History of the Maroons, by R. C. Dallas, vol. ii. letters ix. and x. 
History of the West Indies, by JBryan Edwards, Appendix to Book II. 

f The Edinburgh Review, (No. 4,) in condemning the proceedings of 
the Jamaica govei-nment, remarks, " If, by our oiuii policy, ive have filled 
our colonies with barbarians, let us not aggravate the original crime," &c. 
The American colonists did not originally fill the country which thev 
acquired, with the barbarians whom they expelled : they did not even, 
for the most part, intrude upon them voluntarily ; but were driven by 
the lash of domestic tyrants. 

^ " Sonie gentlemen," says Bryan Edwards, « eveii thought that the 
eo-operationof dogs with British troops, would give not only a cruel, 
but also a very dastardly complexion to the proceedings of government." 

§ See Note E. 



By THE COLONISTS. 87 

triumphant, than on this occasion; that no proceeding in rela- sect. hi. 
tion to the Indians, for which we have been rebuked by the v^^^-''^**' 
British, either before or since our independence, could, by any 
ingenuity or eloquence, be made to wear an aspect of so much 
wantonness and barbarity, as the case of the French neutrals 
presents in the simplest form of recital. Although I may seem 
to fall into a wide digression, or an awkward anticipation, I 
will venture to exhibit it here in some detail, as matter of 
history worthy of being more generally and accurately known. 
Retribution is due to all the parties; to those who perpetrated 
the crime, and to the memory of the sufferers, who, with the 
Americans that received them, have been aspersed, in order 
to weaken the impression of its enormity. 

The most particular account which I have found of this 
transaction, is given in Minot's Continuation of the History 
of Massachusetts.* The historian drew his narrative from 
the manuscript journal of the American commander of the 
Massachusetts' troops, to whom the merit of the conquest of 
Nova Scotia was due. This officer, General Winslow, of 
an unexceptionable and elevated character, left upon record, 
the expression of his disgust and horror, in submitting to act 
the part which was imposed upon him by the British authori- 
ties. I transcribe some of the shocking details fromMinot. 

" The French force in Nova Scotia being subdued, it only remained 
to determine the measures which ought to be taken with respect to the 
inhabitants, who were about seven thousand in number, and whose 
character and situation were so peculiar, as to distinguish them from 
almost every other community that has sufiered under the scourge 
of war." 

" They were the descendants of those French inhabitants of Nova 
Scotia, who after the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, by wliich the province 
was ceded to England, were permitted to hold their lands, on condition 
of making a declaration of allegiance to their new sovereign, wiiich 
acknowledgment of fidelity was given under an express stipulation that 
they and their posterity should not be required to bear arms, either 
against their Indian neighbours, or transatlantic countrymen. This con- 
tr^ct was at several, subsequent periods revived, and renewed to their 
children ; and such was the notoriety of the compact, that for half a 
century, they bore the name, and with some few exceptions, maintained 
the character of neutrals." 

" The character of rhis people was mild, frugal, industrious and pious ; 
and a scrupulous sense of the indissoluble nature of their ancient obli- 
gation to their king, was a great cause of their misfortunes. To this 
we may add an unalterable attachment to their religion, a distrust of the 
righi of the English lo the territory which they inhabited, and the in- 
demnity promised them at the surrender of fort Beau-sejour, where it 
was stipulated that uiiey should be left in the same situation as they were 
in when the army arrived, and not be punished for what they had done 
afterwards." 

" Such being the circumstances of the French neutrals, as they were 

* Chap.x. 



88 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

PART I. called, tlie lieutenant governor of Nnva Scotia, and his councH, aided 
.^ ^ , by the admirals Boscawen and Mostyn, assembled to consider of the 

necessary measures to be adopted towards them. If the whole were 
to suffer for the conduct of a part, the natural punishment would 
have been to have forced them from their country, and left them to go 
wherever they pleased ; but from the situation of the province of 
Canada, it was obvious that this would have been to recruit it with 
soldiers, who would immediately have returned in arms upon the 
British frontiers. It was, therefore, determined to remove and disperse 
this whole people among the British colonies, where they could not 
unite in any off'ensive measures, and where they might be naturalized 
to the government and country." 

" The execution of this unusual and general sentence was allotted 
chiefly to the New England forces ; the commander of which, from the 
humanity and firmness of his character, was the best qualified to carry 
it into effect. It was without doubt, as he himself declared, disagree- 
able to his natural make and temper; and his principles of implicit 
obedience as a soldier were put to a severe test by this ungrateful kind of 
duty, which required an ungenerous cunning, and subtle kind of seve- 
rity, calculated to render the Acadians subservient to the English in- 
terests to the latest hour. They were kept entirely ignorant of their 
destiny until the moment of their captivity, and were overawed or 
allured to labour at the gathering in of their harvest, which was secretly 
allotted to the use of their conquerors." 

" The orders from lieutenant governor Lawrence to captain Mur- 
ray, who was first on the station, with a plagiarism of the language, 
witi)out the spirit of scripture, directed that if these people behaved 
amiss, they should be punished at his discretion; and if any attempts 
were made to destroy or molest the troops, he should take an eye for 
an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and in short, life for life, from the 
nearest neighbour where the mischief should be performed." 

" The convenient moment having arrived, the inhabitants were called 
into the different ports to hear the King's orders, as they were termed. 
At Grand Pre, where colonel Winslow had the immediate command, 
four hundred and eighteen of their best men assembled. These being 
shut into the church, (for that too had become an arsenal,) he placed 
himself with his officers in the centre, and addressed them thus : 

" Gentlebien, 

" I have received from his excellency governor Lawrence, the 
king's commission, which I have in my hand ; and by his orders you are 
convened together, to manifest to you his Majesty's final resolution to 
the French inhabitants of this his Province of Nova Scotia." 

" The part of duty I urn now upon, though 7iecessary, is very disagreeable 
to my natural make and temper, as Ikrio-cv it must be grievous to you -who 
are of the same species." 

" But it is not my business to animadvert, but to obey such orders as I 
receive, and therefore, without hesitation, I shall deliver you his 
Majesty's orders and instructions, namely. That your lands and tene- 
ments, cattle of all kiijds, and live stock of all sorts, are forfeited to the 
crown, with all other ybur effects, saving your money and household 
good.s, and you yourselves to be removed from this his province." 

" Thus it is peremptorily his Mujesty's orders, that the whole French 
inhabitants of these districts be removed, and I am, through his Majes- 
ty's goodness, directed to allow you liberty to carry off"your money and 
houseiiold goods, as many as you can without discommoding the vessels 
you go in. I shidl do every thing in my power, tliat all those goods be 
secured to you, ^nd that }ou are not molested in carrying them off": , 
also that whole families shall go in the same vessel; and make this 



BY THE COLONISTS. §9 

remove, wliicli I am sensible must give you a great deal of trouble, as SECT. III. 
easy as his Majesty's service will admit ; and hope, that in whatever part v.^-v-Ni^/ 
of the world you may fall, you may befaithfulsubjects, a peaceable and 
happy people." 

" I must also inform you, that it is his Majesty's pleasure that you 
remain in security, under the inspection and direction of the troops that 
I have the honour to command." 

" And he then declai-ed tliem the King's prisoners. 

" As some of vhese wretched mhabiiants escuped to the wood.s, all 
po.ssible measures were adopted to force tliem back to captivity. The 
country was laid waste to prevent their subsistence. In the district of 
Min;is alone, there were destroyed 255 housts, 276 barns, 155 out- 
houses, 11 mills, and 1 church; and the friends of those who refused to 
come in, were threatened as the victims of their obstinacy. In short, so 
operative were the terrors that surrounded them, that of twenty-four 
youDg men who deserted from a transport, twenty-two were glad to 
i-eturn of themselves, the others being shot by sentinels ; and one oft/ieir 
friends who -was supposed to have been accessary to their escape, having been 
carried on shore, to behold the destruction of his house and effects, -which ivere 
Inirned in his presence, as a punishment fur his temei'ily, and perfidious aid 
to his comrades. Being emb-Arked by force of the musquetrt/, they were 
dispersed, according to the original plan, among tUe several British 
Colonies." 

Most of the English historians have slurred over this har- 
rowing drama. Il is even asserted in Smollett's Continuation 
of Hume, and in the modern Universal History, that the 
Acadians were merely disarmed, and then suffered to remain 
in tranquillity! Entick, in his " General History of the Seven 
Years War," is somewhat more candid; and for the further 
edification of my readers, I will proceed to quote the language 
in which this reverend author — of no mean authority — relates 
and glosses so portentous an iniquity. As, moreover, his ac- 
count is the only one through which the affair is circumstan- 
tially known to the readers of English history, 1 am disponed 
to improve the opportunity, of placing by the side of it, the 
vindication of those whom he calumniates. 

" In Nova Scotia, matters did not favour the French at all in the 
year 1755. General Lawrence pursued his success, and was obliged to 
use iTiuch severity, to e.xtirpate the French neutrals and Indians, who 
refused to conform to the laws of Great Britain, or to swear allegiance 
to our sovereign, and had engaged to join the French troops in the 
spi'ing, expected to arrive from old France, as early as possible, on 
that coast or at Louisbourg ; some of whom with ammunition, store.s, 
Sic. fell into the hands of our cruizers off Cape Breton. General Law- 
I'ence did not only pursue those dangerous inhabitants ivithfre and sword, 
laying the country -waste, huniing their dwellings, and carrying of their 
stock ; but he thought it expedient for liis Majesty's service to transport 
the French neutrals, so as to entirely extirpate a people, that only 
waited an opportunity to join the enemy" 

" This measure was very commendable. But the execution of it was 
not quite so prudent. The method taken by the general to secure the 
province from this pest, was to distribute them, in number about seven 
thousand, among the British Colonies, in that rigorous season of winter, 
almost naked, and without money or effects to help themselves. In which 

Vol. I.— M 



90 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

PART. I. dislributioii, too many were transported to those colonies, where thev 
.^^^ ^ -m^, might with great ease get to the French forts, or miglit facilitate any 
enterprize from tliose forts, on the back of our provinces on the south 
of the bay of St. Lawrence. Besides, it was exercising a power lie had 
no rigiit unto. For his command reached not beyond the limits of 
Nova Scotia ; and this was loading each government, into which those 
neutrals were transported, with an arbitrary and great expense." 

" This may be exemplified in the case of Pennsylvania. The quota 
imposed on that province was 415, men, women, and children. They 
landed in a most deplorable condition at Philadelphia, to be maintained 
by the province, or turned loose to beg their bread : and this city not 
!)eing above two hundred miles distant from fort Du Quesne, it was very 
probable the men might get unto, and join their countrymen at that 
fort; or strengthen the parties, which hovered about the frontiers, 
and were continually laying waste the back settlements. The govern- 
ment in order to get clear of the charge, such a company of miserable 
wretches would require to maintain them, proposed to sell them with 
their own consent : but when this expedient fer their support was 
offered to their consideration, the transports rejected it with indigna- 
tion, alledgiiig, That they were prisoners, and expected to be maintained 
as such, and not forced to labour. They farther said, that they had not 
violated their oath of fidelity ; which, by the treaty of Utrecht, they 
were obliged to take ; and that they were ready to renev/ that oath, 
, but that a new oath of obedience having been prescribed to them, by 

which, tiiey apprehended the neutrals would be obliged to bear arms 
against the French, they could not take if, and thought they could not 
be compelled to do it. I'luis (ieneral Lawrence c/eare^/i/iecozwi^r?/ of the 
Frencli neutrals; and the Indians in tiieir inlert-st, who had been very 
troublesome, being- most of them Roman Catholics, retired to Canada 
for protection."* 

The first remark I would make on this narrative of Entick, 
is, that the plan Which he ascribes to the government of Penn- 
sylvania, of selling the exiles, had no existence, and was im- 
possible, consistently with its principles and powers. That 
government, and the inhabitants of Philadelphia, when near 
five hundred of them were landed in a plight of misery which 
beggars all description, received them with the liveliest com- 
passion, and provided for their wants with the readiest libera- 
lity.! They were immediately committed to the charge of 

* Vol. i. p. 385. 

1 1 have before me an exemplification of the original subscription pa- 
per for their relief; and a list of the names of some of them, which runs 
thus : the Widow Landry, blind and sickly; her d:iughter. Bonne Landry, 
blind; Widow Coprit, has a cancer in her breast ; Widow Seville, always 
sickly; Ann Leblanc, old and sickly; Widow Leblanc, foolish and 
sickly; the two youngest orphan children of Philip Melanson ; three 
orphan children of Paid Biijuulil, die eldest sickly, a boy foolish, and a 
girl with an infirmity in her mouth; Baptist Galerm's foolish child; 
Joseph Vincent, in a consumption; Widow Gautram, sickly, with a 
young child; Joseph Benoit, old and sickly; Peter Bressay, has a rup- 
ture, &c. ; Peter Vincent, himself and wife sirkly — three children, one 
blind, and very young, &,c. Such was the treatment which they had ex- 
perienced, that notwithstanding the charitable attentions which they re- 
ceived after their arrival in Philadelphia, more than one half of them died 
in a short time. From these particulars we may judge how far they were 
fitted " to strengthen the parties which hovered about the frontiers !" 



BY THE COLONISTS. 91 

the conservators of the poor, to be lodged and fed at the pub- SECT III. 
lie expense; while benevolent individuals of the society of '^-^'"^'''^^ 
Friends, made and collected considerable subscriptions for 
their more comfortable subsistence. One of the almoners of 
the city, on this occasion, Anthony Benezet, — a model of 
philanthropy, with whose character those of the English Pub- 
lic, who have read Clarkson's History of the Abolition of the 
Slave Trade, cannot pretend to be unacquainted — devoted 
himself to the alleviation of both the physical and mental 
wretchedness of the unexpected guests. It is, probably, from 
an anecdote connected with his parental exertions in their 
favour, that arose the idea which Entick embraced, respect- 
ing the conduct of the government of Pennsylvania. This 
anecdote is thus told by Mr. Roberts Vaux in his excellent 
biography of Benezet. " Such was his assiduity, and care of 
them, that it produced a jealousy in the mind of one of the 
oldest men among them, of a very novel and curious descrip- 
tion; which was communicated to a friend of Benezet's — 
' it is impossible,^ said the Acadian, ' that all this kindness 
is disinterested; J\Ir. Benezet must certainly intend to recom- 
pense himself by treacherously selling us."* When their patron 
and protector was informed of this suspicion, it Avas so far 
from producing an emotion of anger, or an expression of indig- 
nation, that he lifted up his hands and laughed immode- 
rately." 

The reverend historian was right in affirming that the British 
commandant in Nova Scotia, imposed an arbitrary and heavy, 
and he might have added, unrequited expense upon the colo- 
nies, among which the neutrals were distributed; but he 
laboured under an error in supposing that General Lawrence 
" cleared the country" at once. As many were sent away in 
1755, as could be disposed of immediately. A considerable 
number remained, with whom the same course was pursued a 
few years afterwards, upon the inordinate alarm created by 
the landing of the French in Newfoundland. 

In the first instance, seven thousand of the obnoxious com- * 

munity, as Entick relates, were thus torn from their rustic 
homes, and transported in a way worthy of being compared 
with the " middle passage," The quota then assigned to 
Massachusetts exceeded one thousand. " This extraordinary 
tax," says her historian Minot,* " was about to be laid anew 
upon the Province, in 1762, by the arrival of nine ships from 
Halifax, with 700 French neutrals on board. By an examen 
of these people in the beginning of the year 1760, there was 

* Vol. ii, ch. v. 



9U DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

PART I. found to be 1017 of them in the Province, of whom only S94 

^-^^^^^"^ were able to labour. For the expense of subsisting them, the 

Province could procure no allowance from Parliament, and so 

had become subject to indefinite taxation in this way at the 

discretion of the commander in Nova Scotia." 

No proof has ever been produced, — none exists, to support 
the charges which Entick prefers against the sufferers — of 
having engaged to join the French troops, and refused abso- 
lutely to take the oath of allegiance to the British sovereign. 
On, the other hand, their own allegations, as he reports them, 
and which give them strong titles to respect, are upheld by 
the tenor of the official declarations of the British audiorities 
in Nova Scotia, who pleaded, little more in substance, than 
the positive orders of their government, and a supposed over- 
ruling necessity, as regarded the more secure dominion of 
that territory. Tradition is fresh and positive among us 
respecting the guileless, peaceful, and scrupulous character 
of this injured people. The impression which it made here, 
upon every one who held intercourse with them, contributed 
to render more intense, the compassion raised by the misera- 
ble vicissitude of their fortunes, and the extreme poignancy 
of their grief Their descendants, now scattered over these 
States, receive, universall}^ from them the same tale of in- 
justice and woe. It is consigned in the Petition which they 
transmitted from Pennsylvania to the King of Great Britain, 
and which bears intrinsic evidence, too strong to be resisted 
by a feeling and unprejudiced reader, of the truth of all the 
details.* To complete the history, I ought to add, that no 
attention whatev^er was paid to their prayer either for imme- 
diate redress, or a judicial hearing. 

Before 1 finish with this matter, I will claim permis- 
sion to moot a simple case, and propound a few natural 
queries. — Had war broken out, in 1808, between France 
and the United States, as was expected, — and had the 
latter immediately, upon the suspicion, or the certainty, 
of the French inhabitants of Louisiana being favourably 
inclined to Bonaparte, " cleared" that province of all of 
them; of men, and women, of the aged and the young, of the 
sick and the insane; " pursuing them with fire and sword, 
burning their dwellings, laying' waste their plantations, and 
destroying their stock" — had those inhabitants been driven 
cif at the point of the bayonet " in the rigorous season of 
winter, almost naked, and without money or effects to he![! 

* See Note F. For the Petition itself, copied t'lum the druiiglu in tlie 
lialid- writing ofBeiiezet. 



BY THE COLONISTS. 93 

themselves" — had they been thrown in this condition, from SECT. in. 
prison ships as confined and wasting as the English hulks, v^^v^*-' 
upon the charity of strangers ignorant of their language, and 
prejudiced against their race.? — Or, had all this been done by 
the American commanders in Louisiana, of their own motion, 
and had the American government then refused to listen to 
the petition for relief, of that remnant of the prostrate exiles, 
which disease and grief had spared, and left them irrevo- 
cably to their fate — what would have been said in Great 
Britain.' When would the world have ceased to ring with her 
execrations upon American barbarity.'* If one of her general 
officers had afterwards put to death two Americans, found and 
acknowledged to be co-operating, with a hostile tribe of sa- 
vages on the borders of Canada, — would she have suffered this 
act to be placed in the same line of atrocity.' or, however 
keen her sensibility at the effusion of her own blood, and at a 
fancied outrage upon her national majesty, would she have 
ventured to denounce the execution of Ambrister and Arbuth- 
not, as equal in guilt, to the extirpation, upon such grounds 
as her historians ofller in the case of the Acadians, of a civi- 
lized community of many thousands, unimpeachable in their 
private life; confessedly amiable in their dispositions; and 
happy in the midst of ease and abundance created by their 
industry and frugality? 

5. Notwithstanding the notoriety of the facts upon which 
I have touched — that the colonies were planted at the expense 
of private adventurers, fugitives from relentless persecution; 
that they formed, for the most part, their own constitutions; 
that they fought and overcame the Indians without aid from 
abroad — that the mother country built no forts either on their 
internal or Atlantic frontier, to protect them from invasion 
— that she sent no ships of war to guard their trade, till 
many years after their settlement, when their commerce had 
become an object of revenue to the crown, and of profit to the 
British merchants — that her parliament passed no one ma- 
terial act concerning them, which did not relate to the regu- 
tion of trade or the enlargement of the metropolitan authority 
— yet, even before the expiration of the seventeenth century, 
it was not uncommon, for the most distinguished of the par- 
liamentary leaders, to hold the language which Charles Towns- 
end employed in 1765, in his speech in favour of the stamp 
act, ''that the Americans were children planted by her care; 
nourished up by her indulgence, and defended by her arms." 
I can trace also, to an early period, the complaints repeated by 



94 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

PART I. the same British minister, concerning their unthankful and 
'^-^^v-^-' seditious spirit, and that niggardliness " which grudged even 
a mite to relieve the beneficent and venerable parent from the 
heavy burdens under which she groaned." When the disputes 
consequent on the stamp act grew warm, these topics were in 
the mouths of all who supported the scheme of taxation, and 
with them were plentifully mixed the prejudices concerning 
the pedigree and general character of the Americans, of which 
I have spoken in the preceding section. It is among the re- 
marks made by Franklin, in his examination before the House 
of Commons, in 1766, that "America had been greatly abused 
in England, in papers, and pamphlets, and speeches, as un- 
grateful, and unreasonable, and unjust, in having put the 
British nation to an immense expense for their defence, and 
refusing to bear any part of that expense." 

"Our newspapers and politicians," said one of the ablest 
of the British writers of that day, " have been lately full of 
" invectives against the disposition and conduct of the Ameri- 
" cans, and using foul-mouthed reproach. There are indeed 
" a set of men, who, from dulness, being totally ignorant of 
" the colonies, or from pride^ ashamed to have a knowledge 
" of them, talk of what we, for such is their language, have 
"done for them; what money loe have spent; what blood ice 
" have lavished; and what trouble toe have had in establishing 
" and protecting them to this day; and after a thous.-Hiid such 
" self-applauses, declaim against the baseness, ingratitude, 
" and rebellion, of an obstinate, senseless, and abandoned set 
" of convicts." 

In this strain. Dr. Johnson wrote and talked, as the organ 
of the ministry. It was in vain that Barre' replied to Towns- 
end with a fire and force of rhetoric worthy of Demosthenes, 
and that Burke declared to Parliament, " the colonies in ge- 
neral owe little or nothing to any care of ours — a generous 
nature has with them, taken its own way to perfection." 
Merit's of every kind continued to be claimed for the mother 
country, and it was particularly insisted, that the blood and 
treasure lavisJied in the American wars, from 1690 to 1763, 
were spent in the cause of the colonies alone. This point had 
come particularly under discussion in the year 1760, when 
the question of surrendering Canada to the French was agi- 
tated in England. It was argued affirmatively with great zeal, 
in a work of high authority at that time, to which Franklin 
answertd by his celebrated Canada-Pamphlet. The illustri- 
ous philosopher demonstrated, that the retention of Canada was 
of the utmost importance to Great Britain; but that, though 



BY THE COLONISTS. 95 

desirable for the colonies as a means of preserving peace on sect. ni. 

their borders, it would be attended with disadvantages over- v.^^v-'*-' 

balancing this consideration, which had become of the less 

moment from the military strength they had acquired, and the 

impression they had made upon the Indian nations. He took 

one particular view of their case, which belongs to history, 

and should be offered to my readers as equally striking and 

just. " I do not think that our ' blood and treasure have been 

" expended,' as the author of the pamphlet intimates, ' in the 

" cause of the colonies, and that England is making conquests 

" for them;' yet I believe this is too common an error; I do 

" not say that they are altogether unconcerned in the event. 

*' The inhabitants of them are, in common with other sub- 

" jects of Great Britain, anxious for the glory of her crown, 

" the extent of her power and commerce, the welfare and 

" future repose of the whole British people. They could not, 

" therefore, but take a large share in the affronts offered to 

" Britain; and have been animated with a truly British spirit, 

" to exert themselves beyond their strength, and against their 

" evident interests. Yet so unfortunate have they been, that 

" their virtue has made against them; for upon no better foun- 

" daiion than this have they been supposed the authors of the 

" war, and has it been said to be carried on for their advan- 

" tage only." 

Adam Smith strengthened the common error, and unwit- 
tingly promoted the ministerial scheme of deception, by the 
following loose passage of the seventh chapter of the fourth 
book of his W(^alth of Nations. — " The English colonists have 
never yet contributed any thing towards the defence of the 
mother country, or towards the support of its civil government. 
They, themselves, on the contrary, have hitherto been defend- 
ed almost entirely at the expense of the mother country." 
These propositions are inconsistent with the tenor of the opi- 
nions which I have quoted from the same chapter, and have 
not the least hold in the colonial history. A direct and com- 
plete refutation of them is to be found in Franklin's writings. 
With respect to the war of 1756 particularly, which Adam 
Smith had, no doubt, immediately in view, the American cham- 
pion placed the question in its true light to the House of Com- 
mons, in his examination before that body. His doctrine passed 
without contradiction at the moment. " I know the last war 
" is commonly spoken of here as entered into for the defence, 
" or for the sake of the people in America. I think it is quite 
" misunderstood. It began about the limits between Canada 
" and Nova Scotia; about territories to which the croion indeed 



86 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 

PART T. " laid claim, but which were not claimed by any British colo- 
'--^-v^^ " ny; none of the lands had been granted to any colonists, we 
" had therefore no particular concern or interest in that dispute. 
" As to the Ohio, the contest there began about your right of 
" trading in the Indian country, a right you had bv the treaty 
" of Utrecht, which the French infringed; they seized the tra- 
" ders and (heir goods, which were your niimufactures; they 
" took a fort which a company of your merchants, and their 
" factors and correspondents, had erected there, to secure that 
" trade. Braddock was sent with an army to retake that fort, 
" (which was looked on here as another encroachment on the 
" king's territory,) and to protect your trade. It was not till 
" after his defeat that the colonies were attacked. They were 
" before in perfect peace with both French and Indians; the 
" troops were not therefore sent for their defence." 

The whole subject, including the motives and ends of what 
were called the colonial contests of the European powers, was 
taken up by Brougham, in his work on their colonial policy, 
and so treated as to be no longer a field of controversy. He has 
satisfactorily shown, that "the quarrels of the mother country 
alone were, in almost every instance, the causes which involved 
every part of the empire in wars;" that " the foreign relations 
of the colonies were almost always subservient, and postponed 
to those of the parent state;" and that, '■'■ so far from involving 
her in their quarrels^ they suffered more than any fart of the 
system, by the proper quarrels of the metropolis.'''' 

The following desultory extracts from his first volume con- 
tain general views, which I think it important to present, 
upon such authority, and some facts, of which the force will 
be more felt, when they are so avouched. 

"The supporters of the different economical systems have consider- 
ed a colony as a mother country, held in subjection by another state ; 
not as a part of that state, connected with it by various ties. It appears 
more proper to view the establishment of distant colonies, as an exten- 
sion of a country's dominions, into regions which enjoy a diversity of 
soil and climate. While the colonies then are only to be viewed as 
distant provinces of the same country, it is absurd to represent their 
defence and government as a burden, either to the treasury or to the 
forces of the mother country." 

"The wars wliich a state undertakes, apparently for the defence oj 
the colonial dominion.s, are, in reality, very seldom the consequence 
even of her possessing' those distant territories. Two nations, whi 
would commence hostilities on account of their colonies, would neve; 
want occasions for quarrelling, had they no possessions. In fact, an; 
influence which the circumstances of the colonies can exert on th 
dispositions of the parent state, is much more likely to be of a nature 
favourable to the maintenance of peace.** Whatever effects may be at- 
tributed to the attention which has been paid to colonial policy, it is 
probable that instead of increasing, it has diminished the frequency of 



ir 

e 

I 



BY THE COLONISTS. 97 

wars In modern times. Whatever circumstances may have involved SECT. III. 
Great Britain in a colonial warfare in 1739 and 1756, a little reflection ■ ^^ _ -^_ ■ 
will show us, tljat the contests were not occasioned by the possession 
of territories in America, but only broke out in that quarter of the globe, 
as well as in Europe, in consequence of the relations of European poli- 
tics between the different powers possessing territories on both sides 
of the Atlantic." 

" It should seem, that in ascribing to the possession of colonies, the 
wars of 1739, 1756, and 1778, philosophers have been led into an en*or, 
not uncommon in any of the departments of science, and in none more 
frequent than in politics, — the mistake of the occasion for the cause, 
and of a collateral effect for a principle of causation. They have search- 
ed in America for the origin of misfortunes, of which the seeds lay near 
home — in the mutual relations of the European powers, the diversity 
of national character, and the belligerent nature of man." 

"The colonies occasion a diversion in favour of the tranquillity and 
security of the parent states. The strength and valour which might 
otherwise be exerted, in committing to the chance of war the indepen- 
dence of the European powers, are displayed in the distant regions of 
the New World, and exhausted without danger to the capitals." 

" While their colonies thus render to the great maritime powers of 
Europe the important service of determining (as it were) the eruption 
of hostilities, to the extremities, where it may spend a force that would 
have proved fatal to the nobler parts of the system, the structure of 
those distant communities, is, in general, of a less delicate nature, and 
better adapted to sustain the shock of military operations." 

" The old colonies of North America, besides defraying the whole 
expenses of their internal administration, were enabled, from their situa- 
tion, to render very active assistance to the mother country, upon seve- 
ral occasions, not peculiarly interesting to themselves. They uniformly 
asserted, that they luonld never refuse contributions even for purposes 
strictly imperial, provided these were constitutionally demanded. Nor 
did they stop at mere professions of zeal." 

" The whole expense of civil government in the British North Ame- 
rican colonies, previous to the revolution, did not amount to eighty 
thousand pounds sterling; which was paid by the produce of their 
taxes. The military establishment, the garrisons, and the forts, in the 
old colonies, cost the mother country nothing." 

" In the war of 1739, when their population and resources were very 
trifling, they sent three thousand men to join the expedition to Cartha- 
gena. The privateers fitted out in the different ports of America, and 
belonging to the colonies, were even in that time, both in numbers of 
men and guns, more powerful than the whole British navy, at the era 
of its victory over the Spanish armada. Many parts of the colonies have, 
at all times, furnished large supplies to the naval force that was destined 
to protect them. The fisheries of New England, in particular, used to 
contribute a vast number of excellent seamen to the British navy." 



Vol. I.— N 



98 



SECTION IV. 



OF THE MILITARY EFFORTS AND SUFFERINGS OF THE 
COLONISTS, IN THE WARS OF THE MOTHER COUNTRY. 

PART I. !• The colonies took an active part, and had even an 

■^^^-^_. excessive share, in the almost continuous wars which Great 
Britain waged between the years 1680 and 1763. As soon 
as hostilities broke out in Europe, towards the close of the 
seventeenth century, the belligerent powers industriously 
kindled the fiercest animosities between their respective Ame- 
rican dependencies. Those of the French and Spaniards 
being greatly inferior in internal strength, thought to compen- 
sate themselves for this disparity, by arraying the Indians on 
their side, and keeping their merciless auxiliaries in perpetual 
action. They animated and led them, in irruptions into the 
British provinces, memorable for the worst evils which charac- 
terize Indian warfare. The destruction of the settlements of 
Port Royal, on the southern frontier of Carolina, by the Spa- 
niards of St. Augustine, in 1686, — the murderous expedition 
of the French against Schenectady and Corlar, in New York, 
and their successful attacks upon Salmon Falls and Casco, in 
1690, maybe cited as specimens, of what is to be considered 
as the mere prelude, to the similar hostilities with which the 
English colonists were afflicted, almost without intermission, 
for more than half a century afterwards. They began nearly 
at the same time, to act vigorously on the offensive; less, how- 
ever, by the proxy of the Indians, whom they could attach 
to their cause, than in their own persons, and with their own 
resources. We find New England twice engaged during 
1690, in attempts upon a large scale, to reduce Canada. In 
that year. Sir William Phipps, governor of Massachusetts, 
with a fleet of eight small vessels, and eight hundred men, 
made himself master of the fort of Port Royal in Acadia, and 
look possession of the whole coast from that place to the New 
England settlements. Another, and more considerable arma- 
ment was despatched immediately after, under the same com- 
snander, against Quebec, but it proved highly disastrous. 



MILITARF EFFORTS, &C. 89 

owing to the incapacity of the royal governor.* One thousand SECT.IV. 
of the New England troops perished in this bold enterprise, s^^'-r-^^ 
and the vessels employed in it, were all lost on their return; 
the colonies that had so nobly strained iheir means, incurred 
a debt of ^140,000, and the necessity of issuing bills of cre- 
dit — the first paper money (born in an evil hour,) which is 
mentioned in our annals. The contingent of men, which 
Connecticut and New York had stipulated to send against • 
Montreal, as a diversion in favour of the forces directed against 
Quebec, was arrested in camp, and dreadfully reduced by the 
small pox. This, and other malignant epidemics, made, at 
different times, great liavoc throughout the North American 
communities, and are to be classed among the most formida- 
ble of the numerous obstacles to their progress. 

These enterprises of New England originated in her own 
sagacity and intrepidity. The mother couniiy took no part 
and little interest in thecn. Sir William Phipps made a voy- 
age to London, in order to solicit aid and encouragement for 
the prosecution of the object, but met with no success. f " It 
would be amazing," says the Universal History, " that the 
English court should all the while express so little, or no con- 
cern, for so fine and well situated a country as Acadia, did we 
not consider that king William and the English government 
had at this time on their hands, two great wars in Europe, one 
in Ireland, and one in Flanders. Whatever had been done 
against the French in New France, was effected by the New 
England forces, without any assistance from Old England, 
farther than that the king and ministry there signed commis- 
sions. "| The fruits of the success at Port Royal were lost 
by the restoration of the whole territory taken, at the peace of 
Ryswick. 

In 1693, the British cabinet yielding at length to the in- 
stances of New England, undertook to assist her with a con- 
siderable force towards another invasion of Canada. The 
fleet designated for the purpose, was, however, first employed 
in an attempt upon Martinico, and experienced there, disasters 
which unfitted it for any further operations. In the mean 
while, the colonies eagerly made preparations, in conformity 
with the plan concerted in England; which were so great, says 
the Universal History, that they probably would have been 



• Universal Military History, vol. xl. 

f Some years after. Colonel Schuyler, of New York, went to Eng- 
land, at his private expense, on the same errand. 
± Vol. xxsix. 



100 MILITARY EFFORTS 

PART I. successful.* In the province of New York five hundred men 
'^-^"v-^-' were raised for an attack upon Montreal; and this body when 
set upon by a greatly superior force of French and Indians, 
fougiit, adds the same authority, " with inconceivable resolu- 
tion." An accumulation of debt and trouble was the only 
result for the colonies, of the whole arrangement. The French 
of Canada were emboldened by its miscarriage, to more 
harassing and destructive incursions. Three years after, the 
French court equipped a considerable fleet, destined to reta- 
liate on the British, by ravaging the coasts of New England, 
and reducing New York. No means of averting the impend- 
ing danger were neglected ^by the colonies; and the only ma- 
terial injury, besides the labour and expense of considerable 
levies, which they suffered from the French plan of conquest, 
was the loss of the fort at Pemaquid, erected, most idly, 
" by the special order of king William and queen Mary," 
though at the sole and very heavy cost of Massachusetts, and 
of which the futility was obvious from the first, to some of the 
" poor provincials." 

When, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, intel- 
ligence was received in America, of England being again 
at war with France and Spain, hostilities were renewed 
there with' the utmost animation. In 1702, South Carolina, 
with a population of only seven thousand whites, and scarce- 
ly forty years after its settlement, sent an expensive expedi- 
tion of six hundred militia, and as many Indians, against 
St. Augustine. The whole purpose was not accomplished, 
indeed, but great mischief was done to the Spaniards. " It 
is almost incredible," remarks the Universal History,! " that 
a government so lately settled as that of Carolina, and subject 
to such mismanagements from the proprietary, should under- 
take so unpromising an affair, and be so near succeeding in it 
as the Carolinians were." The mystery is to be explained by 
the spirit of its popular assembly. Under the same auspices, 
a body of Carolinians marched, the following year, against 
the Apalachian Indians, the allies of the Spaniards, acting 
under the command of a Spanish colonel; penetrated into the 
heart of their settlements; subdued and dispersed them, and 
reduced their whole territory under the British power. An 
invasion of Carolina, from the Havanna, was attempted in 
1706, by the Spaniards and French, with a formidable force, 
and most gallantly repelled and frustrated by troops assem- 
bled in haste at Charleston. Nearly one half of the assail- 
ants were either killed or taken, and the infant colony had 

* Vol. xxxix. p. 63. -j- Vol. xxxix. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 101 

little to regret on the occasion, except the heavy burden of SECT. IV. 
the expenses incurred in the military levy. ^.^-v-^-* 

2. The martial activity of the northern provinces was 
equally remarkable, and their suffering greater. In 1702, all 
the settlements from Casco to Weils were ravaged with fire 
and sword, by a party of Indians and French, and one hun- 
dred and thirty of the laborious husbandmen either killed or 
made prisoners. A large band of the same enemies surprised, 
two years subsequent, the town of Deertield, in Massachusetts, 
laid it in ashes, and either butchered or captured the inha- 
bitants to the number of nearly two hundred. This calamity 
was immediately and fully retorted, by an expedition of five 
hundred and fifty New England volunteers, against the French 
and Indian settlements of Penobscot and Passamaquoddy; and 
but a small time elapsed before the New England government 
despatched another armament, consisting of several thousand 
men, to reduce Acadia. The enterprise failed, in consequence 
of an injudicious march in the neighbourhood of Port Royal, 
which was occasioned by the obstinacy and insubordination 
of the officers of the Deptford man of war, under whose con- 
voy the provincial fleet of transports had been sent.* The at- 
tention of New England was speedily attracted to her domestic 
safety; for the French and Indians penetrated, in 1708, to 
Haverhill, on Merrimack river, and dealt with that town as 
they had done with Deerfield. 

The subjugation of Canada continued to be urged upon the 
British court by the politicians of Massachusetts and New 
York; but it had no relish for the ministry of the day, who, 
as the historians relate, would have preferred rather the ex- 
tension, than the abridgment of the French power in America. 
However, in 1709, orders were received by the provinces 
to prepare for the enterprise, upon a larger scale, and obey- 
ed with the utmost alacrity. After considerable levies had 
been made, and the transports and troops kept, four months, in 
waiting at Boston for the arrival of the English fleet, it was 
announced from London, that a change in the affairs of Eu- 
rope rendered it expedient to relinquish the expedition! 

The account which the historian of New York, Smith, has 
transmitted of this affair, developes further its character, and 
is highly creditable to the spirit of that province. " The plan 
" of operations was < oncerted at New York, with Francis 
"Nicholson, formerly our lieutenant governor, who, at the 

* Universal History, vol. xl. p. 151. 



102 MlLlTART EFFORTS 

PART I. " request oi' our governor and of those of Connecticut and 
>>-^^v-^^ " Pennsylvania, accepted the chief command of the provin- 
" tial forces, intended to penetrate into Canada, b_y she way 
" of Lake Champlain. Impoverished as we were, the as- 
" sembly joined heartily in the enterprise. Universal joy 
" now brightened every man's countenance, because all ex- 
" pected the complete reduction of Canada before the ensuing 
" autumn. We exerted ourselves to the utmost. Having put 
'' ourselves to the expense of above twenty thousand pounds, 
" the delay of the arrival of the British fleet spread a general 
" discontent through the country; our forces were finally re- 
" called from camp, &c. Had this expedition been vigorously 
" prosecuted, doubtless it would have succeeded. The allied 
" army triumphed in repeated successes in Flanders; and the 
" court of France was in no condition to give assistance to so 
" distant a colony as Canada. The Indians of the Five Na- 
*' tions were engaged to join heartily in the attempt, and the 
" eastern colonies had nothing to fear from the Ouwenagungas. 
" In America, every thing was ripe for the attack. At home, 
" lord Sunderland, the secretary of state, had despatched or- 
" ders to the queen's ships at Boston to hold themselves in 
" readiness, &c. At this juncture, the news arrived of the 
" defeat of the Portuguese; the forces intended for the Ame- 
" rican adventure were then ordered to their assistance, and 
" the thoughts of the miiustry entirely diverted from the Cana- 
" da expedition. The abortion of our plan exposed us to con- 
" sequences equally calamitous, dreaded and foreseen; as soon 
" as the scheme dropped, numerous parties of the French and 
" Indian allies were sent out to harass the English frontiers, 
" and committed the most savage cruelties."* 

New England, with her usual spirit, pressed an immediate 
descent upon Acadia at least, with the military means which 
had been collected at such heavy cost; but the captains of the 
British men of war on that station, could not be prevailed upon 
even to serve as convoy to the transports. To defray their 
quota of the expenses of this fruitless armament, the colonies of 
Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, issued for the first 
lime, those ill-omened symbols — bills of credit. 

In less than a twelvemonth, New England, engaged — upon 
further promises of co- operation from the mother country, 
which were not fulfilled: — in an expedition against Port Royal; 
and with several regiments of her owr, supported by a few 
English frigates, forced that place to surrender. In the year 

* History of New York, Part iv. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 



1G3 



1710, the governments of New England, New York, the Jer- SECT.iv. 
seys, and Pennsylvania, suddenly received orders from the "-^-^^^^^ 
British sovereign, to hold in readiness their contingents of men 
for an enterprise against Canada, in which a powerful fleet, 
to be expected in a few days after on the American coast, was 
to take the lead. The fleet arrived in little more than a fort- 
night, bringing requisitions for troops and provisions, which it 
seemed impossible to satisfy on so short a notice. A congress 
of the colonial governors assembled at New London, and took 
such measures as to raise and fully equip, a considerabe force 
in a few weeks. Infinite distress arose out of so sudden and 
large a demand for money and provisions; and a suspicion 
prevailed, that the tory ministry of queen Anne designed, by 
this hurried proceeding, to defeat, themselves, the proposed 
end of the expedition, and to make New England responsible 
for the miscarriage. 

The expedition did, in fact, fail most miserably, by the 
stranding of the British vessels in the river St. Lawrence; and 
the whole blame was cast upon the colonies, as they had fore- 
boded. The English admiral attributed the loss of his ships 
to the advice of the New England pilots, and the French his- 
torian, Charlevoix, an impartial arbiter in this case, charges 
it upon " the distrust and obstinacy of the English admiral." 
The pilots made oath that they gave no such advice as was 
imputed to them, and that their opinion was neither followed 
nor regarded, the English officers having " a mean idea of 
their capacity." The general assembly of Massachusetts chal- 
lenged a formal inquiry into the affair, and sent three of the 
pilots to England to be interrogated, who waited many months; 
but no questions were asked, nor elucidations sought by the 
British court.* 

At the same time not the least credit was openly given to 
the colonies for their prodigious exertions and severe losses. 
" What," says one of the historians, " would be thought ex- 
traordinary in any state of Europe, one fifth part of the whole 
inhabitants of Massachusetts, capable of bearing arms, were 
in pay that summer, not vagrants, swept, as in England, from 
the streets and brothels, but heads of families, artificers, and 
robust young men, whose labour was ines'irnable to new settle- 
ments." We have, on the subject of this oppressive business, 
the testimony of Dummer to this eiTect t "Notwithstanding 
some people found it necessary to blame New Et)gland, the 
better to excuse themselves, yet it has been acknowledged to 



* Hutchinson, vol. ii. p. 175. f Defence of the Charters. 



104 



HULITARV EFFOKTS 



I'AUT I. nie by English gcntlenKMi who were then on tlic sp9t, and well 
^-^■>'"^ experieiiceil in these all'airs, that sneh a fleet and army, wanting 
the nees!^saries ihey ihd, eonld not have been despaielied in 
so short a warning iVoni any port of l^ighiiui. It is really 
astonishing, to eonsiilcr, (hat these litth> governnunts of New 
England sliouM be aide, by their own sirenglli, to pertbrni 
siieh great things in the military way." 

These little governments were not, moreover, prodigal of 
men and money, merely in the struggles at their door, or for 
tiieir own secining interests. U'hen, in 17()3, Jamaiea, nnder 
the apprehension of an invasion, solieited help Ironi Massa- 
chusetts, thai provinei' sent to the island, several companies 
of foot, of which but tew imliviiluals ever returned to their 
native country. When, in the year 1705, Nevis was sacked 
by Ibberville, New England spontaneously contributed a large 
sum of money, together with buihiing materials, &.c. for the 
relief of the sidlerers, and never claimed nor receiveil retribu- 
tion. The British court not only left to the northern colo- 
nics, the care anil expense oi' their own defence against the 
French and Imlians, ami of the protection ami advancement 
of the general interests of the empire, in North America, but 
drew upon their resources for the execution of its plans of 
aggrandizement, in the West Indies. In 1741, three thou- 
sand six hundred men were assessed and levied nj)on them, 
in aid of the expeililion of that year against the Island of 
Cuba; anil they were at the whole charge of bounty, pro- 
visions and transports tor their respective quotas. iMassa- 
chusetts contributed live hundred men, of whom the equii)- 
ment and transportation cost her ;^70()(). It is calculated by 
Hutchinson, that, from the year I(>75 to 1713, the epoch of 
the treaty of Utrecht, five or six thousand of the youth of 
Massachusetts and New Hampshire — the provinces most ex- 
posed — perished either by the hand of the enemy, or by dis- 
tempers, contracled in the military service. This jtulicious 
author is of opinion, that the people of New England bore, 
dming the same interval, " such an annual burden, as was 
not felt by any other subjects of Great Britain."* 

3. While the northern colonies were putting forth these ex- 
traonlinary energies, and undergoing so severe a probation, the 
middle anil southern prosecuted ilieir arduous defence, against 
enemies of an equally tierce and restless spirit; and were ex- 
posed to a>i additional scourge, which could be also traced, in 

» \ol. ii. H.of M p. 18;) 



OF THE COLONISTS. 



106 



to the cupidity of the mother country. The conspiracy ol the SECT. IV 
Indian iribes of North Carolina, in 1712, for the exlermina- '>-^^^"*«.^ 
tion of the whites, is nriarked l»y the massacre of one hun- 
dred and thirty-seven setth:rs about Roanoke ahjne. The 
valour and conduct of (he militia of (he two f/arolinas, gave, 
on this occasion, a final blow to the power of the Tuscaroras, 
one of the most considerable Indian nations of (hat (|uarter. 
Only three years from this signal exploif. South (Carolina was 
the theatre of a similar conspiracy, and had to wrestle, near 
her capital, with a still more formidable tribe, the Yamassees. 
With no more than twelve hundred men on the muster roll, 
fit to bear arms, she expelled the multitude of these ferocious 
barbarians from her soil, having vanrjuisheil them in a gene- 
ral battle of a most obstinate and sat)guinary character. Four 
hundred of her white inhabitants fell in the war. 'I'here is an 
incident in its train, which I shall not do amiss to mention. 
" The Assembly of Carolina," says an English historian,*' 
" passed two acts, to appropriate the lands, gained by con- 
quest from the Yamassees, for the use of such liritish sub- 
jects as should come over and settle upon them. On this 
encouragement, five hundred men from Ireland transported 
themselves to Carolina; but not long after, in breach of the 
provincial faith, and to the entire ruin of the Irish emigrants, 
the proprietors ordered the Indian lands to be surveyed for 
their own use, and run out in large baronies. The old settlers 
thus losing the protection of the new comers, deserted their 
plantations, and again left the frontiers open to the enemy. 
Many of the unfortunate Irish emigrants, reduced to misery, 
perished, and the remainder removed to the northern colonies." 
The number of warriors of the four principal Indian na- 
tions — the Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, and Chickasaws — 
in the neighbourhood of Georgia and Carolina, are com- 
puted to have been, as late as in 17.33, upwards of four- 
teen thousand, not less redoubtable by their numerical supe- 
riority, than their daring and martial spirit. The campaigns 
which were made against them at subsequent periods, exhi- 
bit for their duration, — like the Indian wars of the northern 
and middle provinces, — danger as appalling, and suffering as 
intense, encountered with as much resolution, and sustained 
with as much fortitude, — as many obstacles overcome with as 
much perseverance, — as are commemorated in the military 
annals of any people. 

* Hewatt'H Historical Account of Homli (Jarolina aii<l Gforjjia, Lon- 
don, p. 228. 

Vol. I.— O 



106 MILITARY EFFORTS 

PART I. Carolina had, at the same time, not only to shake off an 
^•^""^'"^i^ oppressive government, and extirpate a host of savages, but to 
protect herself from a body of negro slaves, greatly out-num- 
bering their masters, and ripe for revolt and carnage. Shc 
detec'ed, in 1730, a domestic plot, which looked to the mas- 
sacre of all the whites, and in 1738, found herself engaged in 
a servile war, \vhich was brought to a speedy issue indeed, but 
not without great slaughter. The negroes were excited, on 
this occasion, by the Spaniards, who held out to them the pros- 
pect of liberty, and received the runaways into the military 
service of Spain, — the precise model of the conduct of Great 
Britain towards the same colony, during our revolutionary war. 
Besides the mutual invasions between the Spaniards of Flo- 
rida and the Carolinians, which I have already mentioned, 
others of a later date miglit be cited, in which the blood and 
treasure of the latter were profusely expended. Georgia was 
planted in 1733. Already in 1740, this last born among the 
colonies, sent forth an armament against St. Augustine, and 
two years after, repelled an invasion of the Spaniards, who 
made their attack with a force of thirty-two sail, and three 
or four thousand picked men. 

From the establishment of the French on the Ohio, in the 
middle of the eighteenth century, Virginia, Maryland, and 
Pennsylvania were cruelly infested with Indian hostilities, and 
their sufferings may be regarded as due to the corruption or 
sluggishness of the British rulers. The plan early formed by 
France, of uniting her colonies of Canada and Louisiana, by 
a chain of forts from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi, did 
not escape the sagacity, as it was well fitted to rouse the fears, 
of the colonists. They long laboured in vain to obtain the 
co-operalion of the British court, in anticipating the French 
plan, and to open the eyes of the British statesmen to the 
dangers of its execution.* We have seen in the extracts 
which I have made from the reports of the Board o'f Trade 
and Plantations, the motive which was indulged in England, 
for discouraging anglo- American settlements beyond the moun- 
tains. The authors of the Universal History acknowledge 

* Even before the close of the seventeenth century, the British go- 
vernment i)U(l heen admonished of this evil by Dr. Davenaiit, in the 
following- pussag-e of his Discourse on the Protection and Care of 
Vriidc : " Should the French settle at the disembogueing' of the river 
Mescluisiiie. in the Gulph of Mexico, they would not be long before thej 
made themselves masters of that rich province, which would be an ad- 
dition to their strength very terrible to P^urope. But this would more 
particularly concern England ; for, by the opportunity of that settle- 
menVf by erecting forte along the several lakes betiueen that river and Ca 
natla, they may intercept all the trade of our northern plantations." 



OF THE COLONISTS. 



107 



it as " cerlaiii that from the treaty of Ulrccht, to the middle SECT. IV 
of the century, the government oi' England was lulled into a v.-*^^^ 
most fatal security, whilst that of France was making ^vide 
strides towards a total acquisition of North America, by cut- 
ting off the English colonies I'rom the back country." The 
same writers teach us, however, in a passage which I am about 
to quote, that it was to somelliing more than supineness in the 
British councils, that New York particularly, owed some of 
her worst distresses. 

" Spotswood, the lieutenant governor of Virginia, about 
the year 1716, a man of sense and spirit, tindingthe Ouiaouais, 
now called the Twightees, extremely well affectioned towards 
the English^ proposed to purchase some of their lands upon 
the river Ohio, and erect a company for opening a trade to 
the southward, westward, and northward of the river with the 
savages. This was at once a rational and practicable scheme, 
but the execution of it depended entirely upon the favourable 
dispositions of the natives for the English, which might have 
been secured, by the punctual payment of the purchase mo- 
ney or effects. This noble project clashed with the views of 
the French, who had by this time, formed their great schemes 
upon the Mississippi, and the ministry of king George I. as 
we have already hinted, having reasons for keeping well xoith 
that court, the project was not only dropped, but the French 
were encouraged to build the fort of Crown Point, upon the ter- 
ritory of Mw York.''''*' 

4. For Europe, the achievements of which I have spoken, 
however noble, and in themselves worthy of renown, were, in 
a great degree, obscure and insignificant; and England might 
even yet cheat herself into the belief, that the Provincials 
were as humble in their military, as she represented them 
to be in their political and literary capacities. But, an event hap- 
pened in 1746, after which, this delusion could not continue, 
without taking the character of infatuation; nor the continent 
of Europe fail to be struck, with the singular prowess of the 
transatlantic people, and to feel the decisive weight which, 
although of a new creation as it were, they already threw into 
ihe scale of Great Britain. It ^vill be at once under- 

* " Spotswood," says Burke, in his Hislory of Virg-inia, vol. iii. ch. 
ii. " gave oftence to ttie British ministry, by urtjing with too miicli 
boldness, the necessity of establishing a chain of forts for the protec- 
tion of the country between the Apalachian mountains and the Missis- 
sippi." This able governor was dismissed, for urging at the same 
time, the propriety of a claim for compensation, which was preferred 
by some of the provincials, who had accompanied him on an exploring 
arty beyond the mountains. 



108 



MILITARV EFFORTS 



PART I. stood, that I allude to the capture of the celebrated fortress of 
"^^^^-^^ Louisbourg, next (o Quebec, the strong hold of the French in 
the western hemisphere — the key to Nova Scotia — the spring 
of every evil to the British tisheries and trade, — and from 
the influence of its position, and the extent and immense 
expense of its works, which were thought impregnable, com- 
monly styled the Dunkirk of America. At a moment when 
France was without a fear for its safety, and England had 
not even raised her hopes to its conquest, the project of re- 
ducing it was conceived in Massachusetts, and adopted, with 
correspondent boldness, by the other provinces of New Eng- 
land. A body of near five thousand men was immediately 
raised, and a fleet equipped for the purpose, — all without the 
concurrence, or even countenance, of the mother country: 
An expedition, composed of the greater part of the naval 
means of the projectors, and of a body of freeholders, thriving 
artificers, and sons of wealthy farmers, led by a New England 
merchant, had actually been despatched, before any British 
vessels arrived to join in the attempt. I need not repeat the 
details of its wonderful success, so well known to every reader 
of modern history; but I ought to state the opinions pronounced 
by some of the English annalists, concerning the general con- 
duct of the Provincials on the occasion, and the importance of 
the exploit. The design pleads for itself too strongly to re- 
quire certificates, and the merit of it was never claimed by 
Great Britain. 

" The New England troops," says an English authority re- 
ceived as the highest, at the time,* "within the compass of 
twenty-three days from the time of their first landing, erected 
five fascine batteries against the town, mounted with cannon of 
forty-two, twenty-two, and eighteen pounds shot, mortars of 
thirteen, eleven, and nine inches diameter, with some cohorns; 
all which were transported by land, with incredible labour 
and diflicuby; most of them above two miles: all the ground 
over which they were drawn, except small patches or bills of 
rocks, was a deep morass^ in which, while the cannon were 
upon wheels, they several times sunk so deep, as not only to 
bury the carriages, but their whole bodies. Horses and oxen 
could not be employed in this service, but all must be drawn 
by men, up to the knees in mud; the nights in which the work 
was done, were cold and foggy, their tents bad, there being 
no proper materials for tents to be had in New England at the 
outset of the expedition. But notwithstanding these ditficul- 

• * Memoirs of the Last War in America. 



GF THE COLONISTS. 109 

lies, aad many of the men being taken down with fluxes, so SECT. IV. 
that at one time there were fifteen hundred incapable of duty, '^-^--^'-^"^ 
they went on without being discouraged or murmuring, and 
transported the cannon over those ways, which the French had 
always thought impassable for such heavy weights; and besides 
this, they had all their provisions and heavy ammunition, 
which they daily made use of, to bring from the camp over 
the same way upon their backs." 

" The people of New England," says Tindal, the conti- 
nuator of Rapin,* " behaved on this occasion with great spi- 
rit. Three thousand eight hundred and fifty volunteers, all 
of them well affected to the expedition, assembled and em- 
barked at Boston. Though neither the militia nor their com- 
manders had ever seen any military service, they proceeded 
with all the regularity and intrepidity of veterans. The grand 
approaches to the body of the place were to be carried on from 
the southern side. Here the service was extremely laborious; 
the guns for mounting the batteries being dragged through bogs 
and incumbered places by the landsmen, for above two miles. 
They succeeded, however, to admiration, and by assistance 
of the officers and engineers of the marines, and some lent them 
by the commodore^ they mounted a large train of artillery on 
an eminence called the Green Hill, about three quarters of a 
mile from the place. The garrison having made a resolute 
defence, and a general assault being expected, surrendered on 
the 13th of June." 

" It is sufficient to state," observe the authors of the 
Universal History, " that, the colony of New England 
gave peace to Europe, by raising, arming, and transporting, 
four thousand men, who took Louisbourg, ichich proved an 
equivalent, at the peace of ^^ix-la-Chapdle, for all the suc- 
cesses of the French upon the continent of Europe. In the late 
war with France, which was concluded in the year 1762, 
they exerted the same glorious spirit against the common ene- 
my, and greatly contributed to that extension of territory in 
North America," &c. 

The following is the testimony of Smollet,t accompanied 
by some remarks, which I am not sorry to produce at the same 
time. " The most important achievement of the war of 1744, 
was the conquest of Louisbourg. The natives of New Eng- 
land acquired great glory for the success of this enterprise. 
Britain, which had in some instances, behaved like a step- 
mother to her colonies, was now convinced of their irapor- 

* Vol. xxi. p. 157. t Continuation of Hume, 



110 



MILITARY EFFORTS 



PART 1. tance, and treated those as brethren whom she had too long con- 
"^^^^^r^^^-^ sidered as aliens and rivals. Circumstanced as the nation is, 
the legislature cannot too tenderly cherish the interests of the 
British plantations in America. They are inhabited by a brave, 
hardy, industrious people, animated with an active spirit of 
commerce, and inspired with a noble zeal for liberty and inde- 
pendence." This historian, in the same breath in which these 
fine sentiments are uttered, does not hesitate to assert, that 
" the reduction of Louisbourg was chiefly owing to the vigi- 
lance and activity of Mr. Warren, a British commodore, and 
that the operations of the siege, were wholly conducted, by the 
engineers and officers who commanded the British marines!" 
No effort, in fact, was spared in England, to perpetuate the 
affair under this aspect. The agent deputed by the go- 
vernment of Massachusetts to solicit reimbursement for the 
expenses of the expedition, wrote thus from London to the 
secretary of the general court of that province: " Upon my 
arrival in England, the first newspaper I met with on the road 
contained an address to bis majesty, from a sea port which 
trades to Boston; wherein they congratulated his majesly on 
the success of his navy, in taking Cape Breton, without mak- 
ing the least mention of the land forces employed on that oc- 
casion. When I came to London, I there found the effects of 
the arts used to have the conquest deemed a naval acquisition, 
as it was afterwards in the most public manner, declared to 
be by a noble lord then in the ministry. I determined to at- 
tempt to establish the credit of the New England forces, and 
for that end drew up a petition to the secretary of state, pray- 
ing that the account of their behaviour, taken on the spot by 
the governor, and transmitted to the secretary of state, might 
be published by authority; — after several months solicitation, 
this was promised me; but I soon afterwards received such 
treatment as was in effect openly declaring, that it was deter- 
mined not to comply with that promise; — before I could pre- 
vail, I was forced into a sharper contest than I should ever 
choose to be again concerned in."* 

Nay, Mr. Warren himself deposed on oath, in the High 
Court of Admiralty, seventeen months after the event, "that, 
with the assistance of his majesty's ships, &c. he, tiie depo- 
nent, did subdue the whole island of Cape Breton:''! — And 
we shall, by and by, find, upon the testimony of one of the 



* Letter of Mr. Bollan, of April 23, 1752, preserved in the first volume 
ot the Collections of the Mass. His. Society. 

t Registry of the High Court of Admiralty of England, Sept. 29, 174". 



OF THE COLONISTS. HI 

ministry, that at the British court, he, the same deponent, SECT, IV. 
represented the Provincials, as having displayed on the occa- "^-^""-''^^-^ 
sion, arrant and ludicrous cowardice! To make the true spirit 
and value of these allegations better understood, I am tempted 
to transcribe a (ew passages from Hutchinson, whose impar- 
tiality, as far as New England is concerned, will hardly be 
questioned, and who wrote from personal knowledge. 

"• The 23d March, 1745, an express-boat, sent to commo- 
dore Warren, in the West Indies, to request his co-operation 
in the attempt upon Louisbourg, returned to Boston. As this 
was a Provincial expedition, without orders from England, 
and as his small squadron had been weakened by the loss of 
the Weymouth, Mr. Warren excused himself from any con- 
cern in the affair. This answer necessarily struck a damp 
into the governor, and the other persons who were made ac- 
quainted with it before the Provincial fleet sailed. On the 
23d April, however, the commodore arrived. It seems that 
in two or three days after the express sailed from the West 
Indies for Boston, the Hind sloop brought orders to Mr. War- 
ren to repair to Boston, with what ships could be spared, and 
to concert measures with Mr. Shirley for his majesty's general 
service in North America. Whether the land or sea force 
had the greatest share in the acquisition, may be judged from 
the relation of facts. The army, with infinite labour and fa- 
tigue to themselves, harassed and distressed the enemy, and 
with perseverance a few weeks or days longer, must have 
compelled a surrender. It is very doubtful whether the ships 
could have lain long enough before the walls to have carried 
the place by storm, or whether, notwithstanding the appear- 
ance of a design to do it, they would have thought it advisable 
to attempt it; it is certain they prevented the arrival of the 
Vigilant, took away all hopes of further supply and succour, 
and it is very probable the fears of a storm might accelerate 
the capitulation." 

" The commodore was willing to carry away a full share of 
the glory of this action. It was made a question whether the 
keys of the town should be delivered to him or to the general, 
and whether the sea or land forces should first enter. The 
officers of the army say they prevailed." 

" As it was a time of year to expect French vessels from 
all parts to Louisbourg, the French flag was kept flying, to 
decoy them in. Two East India, and one South Sea ship, 
supposed to be altogether of the value of ^600,000 sterling, 
were taken by the squadron at the mouth of the harbour, into 
which thev would undoubtedly have entered." 



112 MILITARY EFFORTS 

PART. I, " With great colour the army might have claimed a share 
^^'^•-^^'^ tvilh the men-of-war in these rich prizes. Some of the officers 
expected a claim would have been laid in, but means were 
found to divert it, nor was any part decreed to the vessels of war 
in the Province service, except a small sum to the brig Boston 
Packet, Captain Fletcher, who being chased by the South Sea 
ship, led her directly under the command of the guns of one 
of the men-of-war."* 

I would add to these facts, that reimbursement i<jas obtain- 
ed from Parliament after seven years of urgent solicitation. 
The picture of sordidness and chicane, which is presented by 
the Massachusetts agent, in his account of the cavils and 
delays interposed to defeat his errand, is as curious as it is 
disgusting, when referred to the administration of so great an 
empire. " The government of Massachusetts," says the 
author whom I have last quoted, "was still, in 1747, soli- 
citing for the reimbursement of the charge in taking Cape 
Breton, and by the address, assiduity, and fidelity of William 
Bollan, esquire, who was one of the agents of the province 
for that purpose, there was a hopefid prospect that the full sum, 
about ^180,000 sterling, would be obtained." 

" Some of the ministry thought it sufficient to grant such sum 
as would redeem the bills issued for the expedition, &c. at 
their depreciated value, and Mr. Kilby, the other agent, 
seemed to despair of obtaining more; but Mr. Bollan, who 
had an intimate knowledge of our public affairs, set the injus- 
tice of this proposal in a clear light, and made it evident, that 
the depreciation of the bills was as effectually a charge borne 
by the people, as if the same proportion of bills had been 
drawn in by taxes, and refused all proposals of accommodat- 
ing, insisting upon the full value of the bills when issued."! 
This haggling with the colonial agents, where so signal a ser- 
vice was in question, — one which purchased an indispensable 
peace for Great Britain — betrays a spirit ivhich none can be 
at a loss to understand, especially when it is recollected, 
what immense sums were lavished by her in support of 
the continental nations. " If a continent must be supplied," 
was the language of the addresses to the king^ from some parts 
of England, " if our spoils must be shared, let America 
partake, rather than ungrateful Germany, the sepulchre of 
British interest." America did not, however, partake, as we 
have seen, until a much later period, and then partook in a 
very different degree and form. She received scarcely c. 

* Vol. ii. chap. iv. -r Ibid. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 113 

soldier for her defence, and had her pittance of retribution SECT. IV. 
doled out to her with huckstering parsimony; while Hanover ^-i•'~v^^^ 
was defended with a profusion of blood and treasure, which, 
as the historians truly remark, astonished all Europe. The 
immense subsidy even preceded the effort of the fickle ally in 
Germany: — The slender reimbursement followed haltingly, 
the invaluable service of the loyal subject in America. France 
stood forth herself, and undertook the whole defence of her 
American possessions: Great Britain left the part of princi- 
pals to hers, acting merely as their occasional, and always 
reluctant auxiliary, 

■ By the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, of 1748, the conquest so 
hardly earned, and so dearly prized by the provincials, was 
surrendered to France, as an equivalent — the only one which 
Great Britain had to offer, — for the towns in Flanders taken 
by the French from her German ally.* And the achievement 
of the colonies proved not merely sterile for their interests, 
as it was rendered by this issue, but the cause of a viral dan- 
ger, and fearful anxiety during many weeks; for, the French 
court, roused by the loss of Louisbourg, directed against their 
coast, the most powerful armament which had ever been sent 
into the North American seas; and which, only an unparal- 
leled train of disastrous casualties, prevented from committing 
extensive mischief. The activity and resolution of New Eng- 
land, in preparing the means of defence, on this occasion, 
corresponded with her previous career. 

Immediately before this invasion was announced, eight 
thousand two hundred men had been voted by the colonies, 
and the greater part of them raised, at the requisition of the 
British ministry, for a general invasion of Canada, which the 
same ministry abandoned the following year, leaving the 
colonies to defray the expense of the levy. This abortive 
scheme, and the Louisbourg expedition, involved them in the 
greatest financial embarrassments. 

5. It was not denied in England, that the reduction of 
Louisbourg preserved Nova Scotia, and enabled the mother 
country to make the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle : nor could it 
fail to be perceived from the affair, how materially the colonies 
might contribute to give her a final ascendancy over her great 
rival. Acknowledgments and praise were not, therefore, al- 
together withheld; but they were so besfowed, as to betray an 
exasperation of those feelings, of which I have particularly 

* See Note G. 

Vol. I.— P 



114 MILITARY EFFORTS 

PART r. treated in my first section. Scarcely two years elapsed, 
^*=»-^'-*k^ before the bill already mentioned, for enforcing ail the king's 
instructions in the colonies, was brought into Parliament; and^ 
at the distance of two years more, rhe new plan for " increas- 
ing their dependence" began to bear fruit, in the prohibition 
of iron and steel manufactories. Among the jealous and un- 
natural returns for their military efforts in the war of 1'744, I 
may enumerate the clause inserted by Parliament, (1754,) in 
the mutiny bill, subjecting all officers and soldiers raised in 
America, by the authority of the respective governors or go- 
vernments, to the same rules and articles of war, and the same 
penalties and punishments, as those to which the British forces 
were liable. A generous opposition was, indeed, made to this 
measure in the House of Commons. Some of the objections 
which were uttered in the debate on the occasion, are worthy, 
in an historical point of view, of being brought to the notice of 
my readers. I transcribe from the Reports, those of Mr. Ro- 
bert Viner, and of Mr. Henry Fox, the minister of the day. 

" Mr. Robert Viner said — Our regiments, so far, at least, 
as relates to the common soldiers, are usually composed of the 
very lowest and most abandoned of our people; but with re- 
spect to the troops now raised, or that may hereafter be raised 
in America, the case is very different: many of them may not, 
perhaps, be able to support themselves in the service of their 
country, without being paid by their country; but many of 
them have engaged, and many of them will, I hope, engage, 
merely for the sake of serving their country; they have senti- 
ments of religion, they have sentiments of honour, and by such 
sentiments they may be kept under proper discipline, without 
such rigorous punishments as are to be inflicted by this bill, 
upon our British mercenary soldiers." 

" This, Sir, we may be convinced of, from the whole tenor 
of our American history. How many wars have our planta- 
tions from time to time been engaged in: Wars more cruel, and 
more liable to ambuscade and surprises, than any we have in 
Europe, and consequently, such as have always required a 
stricter discipline, if possible, than is necessary in this part 
of the world; and yet if we look into their militia laws, we 
shall find, that they have but very few military crimes, and 
that most of their military punishments are only a very mode- 
rate fine, or a very moderate corporal punishment, upon such 
as cannot pay their fine; nay, I do not know, that any of our 
plantations ever extended a military punishment to life or 
limb; and yet they have hitherto carried on, and ended all 
their wars with glory and success. So powerful. Sir, are the 



OP THE COLONISTS. *^^ 

motives of virtue, honour, and glory, where proper care is SECT. IV. 
taken to cultivate them in the breast of the soldier, or rather, ^-^-v-^"*^ 
where care is not taken to eradicate all such principles, by the 
multitude and severity of military punishments." 

" Mr. Henry Fox said — I shall grant that their militia have 
generally behaved pretty well, in all the wars they have been 
engaged in; they have, indeed, on all occasions, shown un- 
daunted courage; as Englishmen^ I hope, always will." 

The mutiny act proved so odious to the colonists, as seriously 
to obstruct the public service, and to render it necessary for 
some of the governors to give public assurances, that the 
militia, when called to march to the western frontiers, should 
not be subject to its provisions. It was not the only griev- 
ance of the description, and by the imposition of which the 
mother country sacrificed justice and policy, to pride, or 
routine. By an act of Parliament, the general, or field 
officers of the colonial troops, had no rank with the general 
and field officers who served by commission from the king; 
and a captain or other inferior officer of the British forces, 
took precedence of the provincial officers of the like grade, 
though the commissions of the latter were of prior date. 
Many attempts had been made, at an early period, to put the 
militia at the disposal of the royal governors, but always with- 
out success. The failure of one of these attempts in Connec- 
ticut, in 1693, was attended with circumstances which deserve 
to be cherished in our history. They are thus related by 
the historian Trumbull, in his homely though impressive way. 
" Colonel Benjamin Fletcher, governor of New York, had 
received a commission entirely inconsistent with the charter 
rights, and the safety of the colonies. He was vested with 
plenary powers of commanding the whole militia of Con- 
necticut and the neighbouring provinces. He insisted on the 
command of the militia of Connecticut. As this was ex- 
pressly given to the colony charter, the legislature would not 
submit to his requisition." 

" The colony wished to serve his majesty's interest, and, 
as far as possible, consistently with their chartered rights, to 
maintain a good understanding with governor Fletcher. Wil- 
liam Pitkin, .Esq. was, therefore, sent to New York, to treat 
and make terms with him respecting the militia, until his 
majesty's pleasure should be further known. But no terms 
could be made with him short of an explicit submission of 
the militia to his command." 

" On the 26th of October he came to Hartford, while the 
assembly were sitting, and, in his majesty's name, demanded 



116 MILITARY EFFORTS 

PART. I. their submission of the militia to his command, as they uould 
'^^'-v-^r' answer it to his majesty; and that they would give him a 
speedy answer in one word, yes or no. He subscribed him- 
self his majesty's lieutenant, and commander in chief of the 
militia, and of all the forces by sea or land, and of all the 
forts and places of strength in ihe colony of Connecticut. 
He ordered the militia of Hartford under arms, that he might 
beat up for volunteers. It was judged expedient to call the 
trainbands in Hartford, together; but the assembly insisted, 
that Ihe command of the militia was expressly vested by 
charier in the governor and company; and that they could by 
no means, consistently with their just rights, and the common 
safety, resign it into any other hands. They insinuated, that 
his demands were an invasion of their essential privileges, 
and subversive of their constitution." 

" Upon this, colonel Bayard, by his excellency's command, 
sent a letter into the assembly, declaring, that his excellency 
had no design upon the civil rights of the colony; but would 
leave ihem in all respects as he found (hem. In the name of 
his excellency, he tendered a commission to governor Treat, 
empowering him to command the militia of the colony. He 
declared, that his excellency insisted, that they should ac- 
knowledge it an essential right, inherent in his majesty, to 
command the militia: and that he was determined not to set 
his foot out of the colony, until he had seen his majesty's 
commission obeyed: That he would issue his proclamation, 
showing the means he had taken to give ease and satisfaction 

■ to his majesty's subjects of Connecticut, and that he would 
distinguish the disloyal from the rest." 

" The assembly, nevertheless, would not give up the com- 
mand of the militia; nor would governor Treat receive a 
commission from colonel Fletcher." 

" The trainbands of Hartford assembled, and, as the tra^- 
dition is, while captain Wadsworth, the senior officer, was 
walking in front of the companies, and exercising the sol- 
diers, colonel Fletcher ordered his commission and instruc- 
tions to be read. Captain Wadsworth instantly commanded, 
" beat the drums," and there was such a roaring of them, 

^ that nothing else could be heard. Colonel Fletcher com- 
manded silence. But no sooner had Bayard made an attempt 
to read again, than Wadsworth cried, " Drum, drum, I 
say." The drummers understood their business, and in- 
stantly beat up with all the art and life of which they were 
masters. " Silence, silence," said the colonel. No sooner 
was there a pause, than Wadsworth spoke with great earnest- 



OF THE COLONISTS. 117 

ness, " Drum, drum, I say;" and turning to his excellency, SECT IV. 
sJaid, " If I am interrupted again, 1 will make the sun shine ^-^^v-^..' 
through ydu in a moment." He spoke with so much energj in 
his voice, and meaning in his countenance, that no further at- 
tempts were made to read, or enlist men. Such numbers of 
people collected together, and their spirits appeared so high, 
that the governor and his suite judged it expedient, soon to 
leave the town and return to New York."* 

6. After the colonies had completely acquired the Atlantic 
territory, by purchase and conquest, without pecuniary or mili- 
tary aid from the government of the mother country, peace 
was the natural and fair fruit of their exertions; and it must 
appear, abstractedly, a gross injustice and hardship, that they 
should be deprived of that inestimable blessing by the broils 
of Europe. The case assumes a complexion of greater 
wrong and oppression, when we reflect, that the wars in which 
they were implicated against their European neighbours, arose 
out of the culpable ignorance of the parent states, respecting 
American geography. The limits of Nova Scotia, and in 
general, the boundaries of the French and English possessions 
in America, were, with a shameful indifference to the welfare 
of the colonists, left by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, unde- 
cided and indeterminable. Hence, even before it suited the 
convenience of the metropolitan countries to break, in Europe, 
through the mere truce consequent upon that treaty, their Ame- 
rican dependencies had begun to vindicate by the sword their 
irreconcilable pretensions to territory. 

The treaty produced no interruption in the encroachments 
of the French of Canada. They pursued unremittingly their 
designs upon Nova Scotia, and the western regions; and em- 
ployed force for their purpose, where force was requisite. 
They seized upon the disputed parts of Acadia; fortified them- 
selves on the lakes and the line of the Ohio; concluded 
alliances with the Indian tribes of those regions; plundered 
and destroyed the trading establishments of the British, and 
made hostile incursions from their forts into the Virginia li- 
mits; while the English colonies, though full of alarms at their 
progress, and smarting under their blows, were restrained by 
their sense of subordination to the government of the mother 
country, from taking, at once, the measures of offence which 
the provocation justified, and their safety seemed to exact. 
" It cannot be dissembled," say the authors of the Modern 

• fiook i. chap. xvi. 



118 MILITARY EFFORTS 

PART I, History, " that the state of parties in England at this time vva? 

'•^^'^^'^^ unfavourable to any vigorous steps against the French. The 

English Americans had not yet, in 1753, ventured to attack 

the French themselves, and this forbearance laid them under 

inexpressible advantages.''''* 

Thus were the colonists prevented, by mal-administration 
in Great Britain, from averting the heavy evils they after- 
wards suffered from the strong footing which the French, more 
wisely and honestly directed, were enabled to secure on the 
> Ohio. The American governors, and particularly Mr. Din- 
widdie, lieutenant governor of Virginia, tried, by " many spi- 
rited speeches, messages, and despatches,"! to rouse the British 
ministry to a sense of its duty and of the natioHal interest; 
until, finding their representations likely to remain unpro- 
ductive, they could hesitate no longer about exerting their 
own strength to dislodge the enemy. Dinwiddle sent first, in 
1753, a messenger, — one major Washington, as the Universal 
History styles him, — to summon the French to evacuate their 
posts on the Ohio; and upon receiving a haughty refusal, raised 
and despatched a regiment under the command of this now 
transcendant name, to establish the British rights in that quar- 
ter. The expedition was unfortunate, and no better success, 
for the moment, attended the similar movements of the northern 
colonies. 

It was, however, recommended from England, that " the 
British settlements should unite in some scheme of common de- 
fence, in the general and open war which was seen to be ine- 
vitable." The arrangement proposed to them by the mother 
country, at that critical moment, when a spirit of generosity 
would have dictated a particular tenderness for their liberties, 
involved the sacrifice of their main political privilege — exemp- 
tion from taxation by parliament. I need not relate how this was 
resisted; nor dwell again upon the well known Albany plan of 
union; but there is one circumstance in its history which ought 
not to be pretermitted. The leaders of the Provincial assemblies 
were earnestly of opinion, and declared without reserve, that, 
if it were adopted, they could undertake to defend themselves 
from the French^ without any assistance from Great Britain. 
They required but to be left to raise and employ their own 
supplies, in their own way, under the auspices of a governor 
appointed by the crown, to effect their permanent security, and 
even predominance on this continent. 



Vol. xl. p. 196. -j-Ibid. 



OP THE COLONISTS. 119 

7. In 1755, Massachusetts levied, in the space of two SECT. IV. 
months, at the instigation and expense of the crown, a body v^^'-v-"*.^ 
of three thousand men, and by this force, joined with a few 
hundred regulars from Britain, the French were completely 
expelled from Nova Scotia. The British ministry determined 
about the same time on a decisive effort, by sending over troops 
for the destruction of all the French posts, which had been es- 
tablished within the immense region to which the British crown 
laid claim in America. They committed the enterprise to ge- 
neral Braddock, of fatal memory, who landed in Virginia early 
in that year, with two regiments of British regulars; and in the 
beginning of the summer, set out, reinforced by a body of 
Virginia militia, and friendly Indians, on his noted expedition 
against Fort Du Quesne. This officer had too just a sense of 
the superiority of ihe European race of men and soldiers, not to 
despise the Provincials. Accordingly, he '■'• neglected, diso- 
bliged, and threw aside the Virginians, and treated the Indians 
with the utmost contempt."* " He showed," says Em .,k,t 
" such contempt towards the Provincial forces, because they 
" could not go through their exercise with the same dexterity and 
*''' regularity as a regiment of guards in Hyde-Park.^'' "Incon- 
"versation with general Braddock one day," says Franklin, 
" (in his Memoirs,) " he was giving me some accouni of his in- 
" tended progress. ' After taking Fort Du Quesne,' said he, ' I 
" am to proceed to Niagara, and having taken that, to Fronte- 
" nac, if the season will allow time, and I suppose it will; for 
" Du Quesne can hardly detain me above three or four days; 
" an J then I see nothing that can obstruct my march to Niagara.' 
"Having before revolved in my mind the long line his army 
" must make in their march by a very narrow road, to be cut 
" for them through the woods and bushes; and also what I had 
"heard of a former defeat of fifteen hundred French, who in- 
" vaded the Illinois country, I had conceived some doubts and 
" some fears for the event of the campaign. He smiled at my 
" ignorance, and replied, 'These savages may indeed be afor- 
" midable enemy to your raw Jlmerican militia.^ but upon the 
" king''s regular disciplined troops, Sir, it is impossible they 
" should make any impression.' "J 

The humble auxiliaries of Braddock pointed out the dan- 
gers to which he was exposed, remonstrated against the confi- 
dence of his march, and in so doing, heightened his magnani- 

* Universal History, vol. xl. p. 203, 
t Vol. i. p. 143. 
t See Note H. 



120 MILITARY EFFORTS 

PART, I. mous disdain. The horrible catastrophe is still fresh, in verse 
"-^^^-^^ and prose, at almost every fireside in the interior of our country. 
Six hundred of his regulars either killed or disabled, by an 
enemy not two-thirds of their number, and partly armed with 
bows and arrows — himself mortally wounded — the middle 
colonies laid bare to the tomahawk and scalping knife — their 
frontiers devastated and drenched in blood — consternation 
spread throughout British America: — such were the conse- 
quences of the national and personal pride of the British ge- 
neral. The moral of the affair is made doubly striking by the 
following accurate relation of the English Universal History: 
" It is remarkable, that (he Virginians and other Provincial 
troops who were in this action, and whom Braddock, by way 
of contempt, had placed in the rear, far from being affected 
with the panic which disordered the regulars, offered to ad- 
vance against the enemy, till the others could form and bring 
up the artillery; but the regufers could not be brought again to 
the charge, where, as they said, they were butchered without 
seeing the enemy. Notwithstanding this, the Provincials ac- 
tually formed, and behaved so well, that they brought off the 
remaining regulars; and the retreat of (he whole was so unin- 
termitting, (hat the fugitives never stopped, till they met the 
rear division, which Avas advancing under colonel Dunbar."* 
I may add, from the Memoirs of Franklin, who wrote as an 
eye witness, a passage which throws additional light on the he- 
roic character of the "king's regular disciplined troops." " In 
their first march, from the landing till they got beyond the 
settlements, they had plundered and stripped the inhabitants, 
totally ruining some poor families, besides insulting, abusing, 
and confining the people if they remonstrated. This was 
enough to put us out of conceit of such defenders, ifu-e had 
Ideally wanted any.'''' 

It was the lot of a provincial- commander, with provincial 
troops, to restore, in a few weeks after the discomfiture of 
Braddock, the honour of the Bristish name, and the tone of 
the public mind. The plan of operations for the campaign 
of 1755, arranged in Virginia, by a congress of governors, 
embraced an attempt on the French fort at Niagara, to be 
made by the American regulars and Indians; and an expedi- 
tion against Crown-Point, to consist of militia from the north- 
ern colonies. In the course of the summer, an American ■ 
force of six thousand men was collected for these purposes at 
Albany, the appointed rendezvous, and the command of the 

* Vol. xl.p.204. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 



121 



main body devolved upon colonel William Johnson, a member SECT IV. 
of the council of New York. When on his march to Ticon- ^--'^v-^^ 
deroga, this officer learned (hat a large body of the enemy, 
composed principally of French regulars, under an expe- 
rienced commander, Baron Dieskau, had been despatched 
from Canada, to intercept the de%ign upon Crown-Point. 
They met on the banks of Lake George, and Johnson gained 
a victory nearly as signal as the defeat on the Monongahela. 
Eight hundred of the French, the flower of their troops, were 
killed in the action, and their disiinguished leader fell, mor- 
tally wounded, into the hands of the anglo- Americans: while 
the loss of the latter did not exceed one hundred and eighty 
men. Dieskau's plan in setting out from Canada widi his 
invincible Europeans, was to desolate the northern frontier 
settlements, and wraj) Albany in flames; — and these were the 
evils which Johnson averted, besides rt gaining for the English, 
the esteem and confidence of the Indians, whom Braddock's 
tragedy had alienated. According to the English historians, 
Dieskau owed his misfortune to presumption, and an obstinate 
contempt for the British provincials. 

Although great expenses were incurred, and numerous 
forces raised by the colonies, to carry info eff(^ct the whole 
plan of the campaign, little was accomplished, except the re- 
pulse of the French, on this occasion. In accounting for the 
unprofiiableness of the preparations of the year, the Univer- 
sal History represents it as evident, that certain private 
discontents lurked in the minds of the chief provincials." 
" Whatever they might pretend, they knew well that Brad- 
dock had a commission, to act as commander in chief of all 
the British troops on the continent of America, and that they 
were only to be subordinate to him."* The British govern- 
ment gave all the eclat to the aflair of Lake George, of which 
it was susceptible, with an eye to their interests in Europe; and 
we find the parliament, in an address to the king, " thankfully 
acknowledging his majesty's wisdom and goodness, in having 
generously extended encouragement to that great body of his 
majesty's brave and faithful subjects^ with which his American 
provinces happily abounded, to exert their strength on this 
important occasion of the encroachments of the French in 
America, as their duty, interest, and common danger obliged, 
and strongly called upon them to do." 



*Vol. xl. p. 211. 
Vol. L— Q. 



122 MILITARY EFFORTS 

PART I. 8. When open war was at length declared, in 1756, be- 
^-^^v-"^-' tvveen England and Franpe, the British cabinet manifested the 
disposition, to exert the force of the empire, against the French 
power in North America; — and " the English subjects," says 
the Universal History, " all over that continent, seeing their 
mother country was determined to support them in earnest, 
made extraordinary etforts lo bring a formidable force to the 
field." It was, in fact, settled by a council of colonial gover- 
nors, that twenty-one thousand men should be raised for spe- 
cific expeditions, notwithstanding the great addition, which 
the levies and disasters of the preceding year, had made to 
the fiscal difiiculties of the colonies. Their evil genius sug- 
gested to the mother country the appointment to the command 
over their forces, and the twelve thousand British regulars 
destined to the same service, of a man, in whose character the 
leading trait was indecision. The Earl of Loudon, to whom 
their fortunes were committed, had not only this defect, but 
almost every other kind of incapacity. Authority to act was 
wanting, until his arrival; or, at least, was affected to be 
thought so, by general Abercrombie, who commanded in the 
interval; and " owing to the unsettled state of the British 
ministry,"* he came too late in the year for any enterprise of 
moment. It is the opinion of the military critics, that had he 
appeared sooner, and possessed the proper degree of energy, 
the whole plan of operations concerted at New York, and 
which looked to the reduction of all the principal posts of the 
French, might have been eflfected. Thus another year was 
lost, at an enormous expense to Great Britain, and with infinite 
mischief and trouble to the colonies. 

Meanwhile, tbe French exerted their accustomed activity, 
and gained the most important advantages. They took Fort 
Oiitario, at Oswego, and made prisoners the garrison of sixteen 
hundred American regulars. — By this event they became 
masters of the great lakes; the northern frontier was nearly 
laid open, and full scope afforded to the Indians to glut their 
vengeance on the English settlers. With common judgment 
and exertion, on the part of the British general Abercrombie, 
whom I have mentioned above as the commander in chief ad 
interim, Oswego might have been preserved. This assertion 
is fully established in a work which his immediate predeces- 
sor, governor Shirley, published in London in 1758, in de- 
fence of his own military administration in America.! It is, 

* Universal History. 

j^ " The Conduct of major general Shirley, late General and Com- 
mander in chief of his Majesty's forces in North America, brieflv 
stated." 



OP THE COLONISTS. 123 

in the same volume, put beyond question, that the American SECT.iv. 
garrison, composed of the author's regiment and tliat of Pep- ^.^^^-"^^ 
perell, behaved with the utmost gallantry; so far that when 
the works of the fort were no longer tenable, the officers had 
considerable difficulty in persuading the men to lay down their 
arms, and that, some of the latter, according to the testimony 
of eye witnesses, " suffered themselves to be knocked on the 
head by the enemy, rather than submit." " Yet," says go- 
vernor Shirley, "reports were propagated, and gained credit in 
England, that the American regiments, (the fiftieth and fifty- 
first,) consisted of transported convicts and Irish Roman Ca- 
tholics, who by their mutinous behaviour, had contributed to 
the loss of the place. Reports were likewise propagated 
greatly to the disadvantage of the officers of both regiments; 
but their known characters, and the behaviour of several of 
them upon other occasions, in his majesty's service, as well as 
this, are sufficient to vindicate their honour." 

The principal of the expeditions planned for the year 1756 
by the provincial governments, was that against Crown-Point, 
to consist of a body of ten thousand men, made up of contin- 
gents from the colonies north of the Carolinas. Seven thousand 
troops were actually collected for the purpose, and the com- 
mand of the expedition was assigned to major-general Winslow 
of Massachusetts. The sufficiency of this force is asserted by 
Shirley as unquestionable, from the unanimous opinion of a 
council of war held at Albany, at which general Abercrombie 
assisted. Winslow was in full readiness, in good time, to 
proceed with his provincials, first against Ticonderoga; and 
it had been settled, that the British regulars should move up 
to forts Edward and William Henry, which the former occu- 
pied, and be there prepared to sustain or assist them, as the 
occasion might require. The march of Winslow was delayed 
by obstacles ascribable to the improvidence of Abercrombie; 
and on the intelligence of the fall of Oswego, all offensive ope- 
rations in that quarter were countermanded by the Earl of 
Loudon. In the letter* which Winslow addressed to the Earl 
of Halifax in London, on the subject of this affair, we find the 
following passage. " I write that your lordship may be in- 
formed of the share the American troops under my command 
have had in this expedition; and although we did not attempt 
Crown-Point, which was the thing principally aimed at by our 
constituents, yet we were the means of stopping the current 
of the French forces, after their success in carrying Oswego, 

* Preserved in the Collections of the Mass. His. Soc. vol. for 1799 



124 ' .MILITARY EFFORTS 

PART I. and thereby the saving of Albany, and a great part of the 
)vernment of New York, as well as the western parts of 
New England, which, by their joining their forces at Carilon, 
was doubtless their intent." 

The right of Massachusetts to compensation for the provi- 
sions with which she furnished the king's troops during these 
arrangements, was admitted by the British parliament; but se- 
veral years elapsed before any part of the sum liquidated was 
paid. Minot relates a transaction of the governor of Massa- 
chusetts with the general court of that province, in relation to 
a levy of three thousand five hundred for the Crown- Point 
expedition, which exemplifies strikingly, the impression enter- 
tained by the royal officers in America, of the scrupulosity 
of the fiscal conscience of the mother country, where the 
northern colonies were concerned. " The governor agreed to 
the terms of the general court, and loaned the province thirty 
thousand pounds sterling, out of the king's money in his hands, 
taking for security such grant as might be made them for their 
extraordinary services by the king or parliament, and a farther 
collateral mortgage of a tax, to be raised in the tie o following 
years.* 

Notwithstanding that the only brilliant achievements dur- 
ing the war, had been performed when the Provincials singly 
opposed the enemy, or were seconded but in a very slight 
degree by the British regulars; and that the adventure of 
Braddock had baffled all the domestic arrangements for de- 
fence, it can occasion no surprise, that the British commander 
in chief, at the beginning of 1757, formally laid to the charge 
of the colonies, all the calamities of the preceding year. He 
established his own infallibility by doing no more, the suc- 
ceeding campaign, although the British force in America at 
his disposal had been augmented to twenty thousand men, and 
twenty ships of the line, than make a demonstration upon 
Louisbourg. He collected his troops at Halifax; waited there 
some time for advices; then returned gallantly to New York and 
— dismissed the Provincials. Montcalm, who succeeded baron 
Dieskau in the command of the military means of Canada, tak- 
ing advantage of the absence of the principal part of the British 
army, besieged and reduced Fort William Henry, situated on 
the southern coast of Lake George, so as to command that lake 
and the western line. The Provincial army stationed for the 
defence of this important post, made a noble resistance, and 
were admitted to an honourable capitulation by the French 
commander; but his Indian allies, with circumstances which 

i 

* History of Massachusetts, vol. i. c. xii. 



MILITARY EFFORTS 125 

mark out the case as the pattern of the recent one of the SECT IV. 
river Raisin, — ;either butchered^ or appropriated to themselvs v-^-v-^i^ 
as prisoners, a considerable part of the brave garrison. Out 
of a New Hampshire corps of two hundred, eighty were mis- 
sing. It was not merely this horrible catastrophe, and the loss 
of ordnance, ammunition, provisions, and the shipping on Lake 
George, which the colonists had to lament: they saw the In- 
dians, whom they had been able to attach to their cause, 
shaken in their fidelity; and such of the (ribes as had deier- 
mined to keep aloof from the struggle, or had wavered iu ihe 
choice of a side, converted into indefatigable assailants. 
Massachusetts felt, more than the enemy, ihr energy of the 
British commander in chief, in a consroversy which arose be- 
tween him and her general court, concerning the quartering 
and billeting of the British regulars upon the inhabitants. She 
resisted, with her ancient spirit, the extension of the act of par- 
liament on that head, to America, and stood tirm under me- 
naces fitted only for the meridian of Hindostan. 

Our illustrious countryman, Franklin, had personal rela- 
tions with the noble lord, who proved, during two years, so 
fatal a scourge to the colonies. He has left, in his Memoirs, 
the following notice of him, for the edification of posterity. 
" I wondered how such a man as Loudon came to be entrusted 
with so important a business as the command of a great army. 
Instead of defending the colonies with his grea force, he left 
them totally exposed, while he paraded id!) at Halifax; by 
which means Fort George was lost. Besides he deranged all 
our mercantile operations, and disiressed our trade by a long 
embargo on the exportation of provisions, 6n pretence of keep- 
ing supplies from being obtained by the enemy, but in reality 
for the purpose of beating down their price in favour of the con- 
tractors, in whose profits it was said, (perhaps from suspicion 
only.) he had a share; and when at length the embargo was 
taken off, he neglected to send notice of it to Charleston, 
where the Carolina fleet was detained near three months; end 
whereby their bottoms were so much damaged by the worm, 
that a great part of them foundered in rheir passage home."* 

In 1758, the elder Pitt breathed a new soul into the British 
councils, and resuscitated in the colonies those native energies, 
which a long series of exhausting and disappointed efforts, had 
sensibly depressed. Under the influence of his magnanimous 
spirit, America may be said to have emerged, with the whole 
British empire, "from the gulf of despondency, and risen to 
the highest point of practical vigour." A contf.gious zeal 

* See Note I. 



126 



MILITARy EFFORTS 



PART I. gave the fullest effect, to his call upon the colonial governors, 
-^"v^^ for the largest bodies of men the number of the inhabitants 
would allow. Fifteen thousand troops were voted by the three 
provinces of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire 
alone. In less than twenty-four hours, a private subscription 
of ^20,000 sterling for encouraging eniistmenis, was filled up 
in Boston. "The expense," says Minot, "of the regiments 
raised for his majesty's service amounted to near one hundred 
and twenty thousand pounds sterling: besides this, ihe inha- 
bitants of the several towns in the province, by fines, or by 
voluntary contributions to procure men for the service, paid at 
least sixty thousand pounds sterling more; which was, in all 
respects, as burdensome as if it had been raised as a tax by 
the government. The defence of our own frontiers, and 
the other ordinary charges of government, amounted to, at 
least, thirty thousand pounds sterling. The province had, in 
one campaign, on foot, seven thousand troops. This was a 
greater levy for a single province, than the three kingdoms 
had made collectively in any one year since the revolution." 

Loudon was superseded, in the beginning of 1758, by ge- 
neral Abercrombie: but the colonies cannot be said to have 
gained much by the substitution. The new commander in 
chief wasted a part of their resources, and checked the mo- 
menium of the mighty force which Pitt had arrayed on this 
continent against the French, by an ill-advised and ill-ma- 
naged expedition against Crown-Point. He took with him 
sixteen thousand men^ of whom nine thousand were Provincials, 
and urged them to a hopeless assault upon Ticonderoga, which 
cost the lives of more than sixteen hundred of his bravest 
European troops, and of four hundred provincials. " This 
attack," says the Universal History, " when no prospect of 
success could possibly present itself, was followed by a retreat 
as pusillanimous, as the other was presumptuous. The general 
reimbarked the troops, and though not an incidenlhad happened 
that might not have been easily foreseen, or rationally expect- 
ed, he returned to his forntwr camp at Lake George."* 

Anxious to repair in any way, the mischief and disgrace of 
this repulse, Abercrombie consented, at the solicitation of a 
native Jlmerican officer, colonel Bradstreet, to detach him 
with three thousand men, against Fort Frontenac, on the 
north side of the Ohio. This body of troops, with the ex- 
ception of only one hundred and fifty-five regulars, was com- 
posed of Provincials; and after surmounting, as the historian? 

♦ Vol. xl. p. 220. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 



127 



acknowledge, incredible difficulties and hardships, it gave an SECT.IV. 
earnest of victorv to the British cause, by capturing the for- "— ^^'^^^' 
tress, together with ni^ armed vtssels, a vast quantity of am- 
munition, &c. and breaking up thus, the principal depot of 
supplies for the south western posts, and the hostile Indians. 
Louisbourg constituted an object of primary importance in 
the great scheme for annihilating the French power in Ameri- 
ca, which engrossed the care and strained the vigour of Pitt.* 
The reduction of that fortress was one of the first operations of 
the campaign, and was accomplished with an overwhelming 
force indeed, but in a manner highly creditable to the courage 
of the victors, among whom the provincials bore a distinguish- 
ed part. It was not easy, even for the mother country to for- 
get, or not to recal at the moment, what had been before 
achieved by New England on the same theatre. 

9. To dispossess the French of Fort Du Quesne, the bul- 
wark of their dominion over the western region, entered neces- 
sarily into the plan of the campaign. This object was effect- 
ed, not certainly through the judgment and skill of the British 
commander, within whose province it fell, but by the magni- 
tude of the force employed, and the influence of extraneous 
events. t The Virginia militia composed a large part of the 
army, which general Forbes carried with him in this enter- 
prise, and were under the immediate direction of Washing- 
ton. They performed the chief labour, truly herculean, and 
infinitely more oppressive than would have been necessary, 
had the British leader condescended to avail himself, in the 
choice of a route and of the season of action, of the experi- 
ence and topographical knowledge of the provincial colonel. 
Against the urgent, reiterated expostulations of the latter, and 



* Much of the merit of tlie scheme is due to P'ranklin, wlio constantly 
urged the conquest of Canada upon the British government. The fol- 
lowing' statement of liis grandson has never been contradicted in Eng- 
land. " The more Franlclin weighed the sul)ject in his mind, the more 
was he satisfied, that the true interest of Gi'cat Britain lay in weakening 
her rival on the side of America, rattier than in Germany; and these 
sentiments he imparted to some of his friends, by whom they were re- 
ported to William Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham; who no sooner 
consulted him on the practicability of the conquest of Canada, than he 
was convinced by the force of his argtunents, and determined by the 
simple accuracy of his statements. Tiie enterprise was immediately 
tuidertaken ; the command given to general Wolfe," 8cc. (Memoirs, 
p. 194.) 

f " The success of colonel Bradstreet, at Frontignac, in all proba- 
bility, facilitated the expedition under Forbes," he. — Russel's Modern 
Etirope,let. xxxiii. 



128 MILITARY EFFORTS 

PART I. when there was left scarcely time to tread the beaten track, 
'—^'v-'*^ universally confessed to be the best passage over the moun- 
tains, he selected a road, every inch (^ which was to be cut, 
and which exacted the constant toil of fifleen hundred or two 
thousand men. Washingion advanced in front, and opened 
the almost impervious forest and mountain to the main body of 
the army. On the approach to Fort Du Qiu^sne, the British 
general, disregarding the caution of his faithful j)ioneer, sent 
forward a select corps of eight hundred men to iccdinoi- 
tre the adjacent country. The enemy overpowered this de- 
tachment, and had destroyed it, but for the bravery and 
self possession of a Virginia ca|)tain.* Out of a company 
of one hundred and sixty-six provincials, sixty-two fell on the 
spot; and of the whole detachment, the number of killed and 
wounded was nearly tbree hundred. From the account of 
this expedition, framed by Chief Justice Marshall,! upon 
the papers of Washington, and unquestionably authentic, 
it is to be inferred, that if the army of Forbes did not en- 
counter even a worse fate than that of Biaddock, it was not 
owing to any superior wisdom of management, or greater 
pliability, in the leadtT. 

" The army," says Marshall, " reached the camp at Loyal 
Hanna, tlirough a road alleged to be indescribably bad, about 
the fifth of November, wheie, as had been predicted, a council 
of w:>r determined, that it was unadvisable to proceed further 
this cantpaign. It would have been almost impossible to have 
winter'^d an army in that position. They must have retreated 
from the cold inhospitable wilderness into which they had 
penetrated, or have suffered immensely, perhaps have perished. 
Fortunately some prisoners were taken, who informed (hem of 
the extreme distress of the fort. Deriving no support from 
Canada, the garrison was weak; was in great want of pro- 
visions; and had been deserted by the Indians. These en- 
couraging circumstances changed the resolution which had 
been taken, and determined the general to prosecute the ex- 
pedi'ion." Washington seems to have felt the utmost indig- 
nation and chagrin at the conduct of the enterprise, and ex- 
pressed himself with unusual warmth, in his first letters to the 
speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses. " We appear, 
in my opinion, to act under the guidance of an evil genius. 
We shall be stopped at the Laurel Hill this winter. Can ge- 
neral Forbes have orders for these proceedings? Impossible. 



* See a full account of the service performed by this officer, cap- 
tain Bullet, in vol. iii j). 3, of B\irk's History of Yirginfe. 
f Life of Washington, vol. ii. ch. i. 



OP THE COLONISTS. 129 

The conduct of our leaders is tempered with something I do sect.iv. 
not care to give a name to. Nothing but a miracle can bring s^'-v'>«^ 
the campaign to a happy issue," &c. 

When we consider what is the present face of the country 
between Philadelphia and Pittsburg, it is doubly interesting to 
contemplate the picture drawn of it by the English historians, 
in their commemoration of this affair. " In the beginning of 
July, 1758, Brigadier Forbes set out on his expedition from 
Philadelphia for Fort Du Qiiesne. He was to march through 
countries that never had been impressed by human footsteps, 
and he had difficulties to surmount, greater, perhaps, than 
those of Alexander, in his expedition to India; by establishing 
magazines, forming and securing camps, procuring carriages, 
and encountering a thousand unforeseen obstacles in penetrat- 
ing through regions, that presented nothing but scalping parties 
of French and savages, mountains, woods, and morasses," &c.* 

It is sufficient to repeat the fact, that the colonies had on 
foot, in active co-operation with the British forces, in 1759, 
twenty-five thousand troops, — to establish their title to a large 
share of the glorious results of that year. The number of the 
provincials was considerable before Quebec, and still greater 
in Amherst's arduous expedition, by way of Ticonderoga, 
Crown-Point, and Lake Champlain. That ablest of the British 
commanders in America, bore, in the general orders which he 
issued, after the complete reduction of Canada, in 1760, the 
strongest testimony to " the indefatigable effijrts of his majesty's 
faithful subjects in America, and the zeal and bravery of the 
officers and soldiers of the provincial troops." 

The troops of this description composed altogether the third 
grand division of the British force, with which general Pri- 
deaux, " assisted by the interest and abilities of the provincial 
leader, gen. William Johnson," marched to reduce Fort Niaga- 
ra, a post of the utmost consequence in itself, and in relation 
to the success of the main enterprise of the campaign of 1759. 
The manner in which this service was performed will sustain a 
comparison at least, with that of Abercrombie's attempt upon 
Ticonderoga. I will adopt the narrative of the Universal 
History. 

" While Amherst was reducing Crown-Point, and making 
himself master of Lake Champlain, Prideaux and Sir Wil- 
liam Johnson were proceeding against Fort Niagara. On 
the 20th of July, Prideaux, to the inexpressible grief of 
the army, was killed in the trenches, by the bursting of a 



* Vol. xl. p. 221, Universal History, 

Vol. L— R 



130 MILITARY EFFORTS 

PARTI, cannon. Tlie command then fell upon Sir William Johnson, 
"^^"^-^^ who was superseded by brigadier-general Gage, by the appoint- 
ment of Amherst. Before Gage could arrive at Niagara, John- 
son had performed wonders. He had carried his approaches 
within one hundred yards of the covert-way of the fort; and 
the French were so apprehensive of losing that palladium of 
their interest in North America, that they exerted their utmost 
to maintain it, by collecting seventeen hundred men from all 
the neighliouring posts, particularly from Detroit, Venango, 
and Presque Isle, under the command of Mons. D'Aubry. 
Had this reinforcement reached the fort, it must have been 
impregnable; but Johnson made dispositions towards the left, 
on the road leading from Niagara falls to the fortress, for in- 
tercepting it." 

" About 8 o'clock, on the 24th of July, the enemy appear- 
ed, and the English Indians attempted in vain to have some 
talk with their countrymen, who served under the French. 
The battle began with a horrible war-whoop, which was now 
matter of ridicule, rather than terror, to (he English, uttered 
by the French Indians. The French, as usual, charged with 
vast impetuosity, but being received with equal firmness, and 
the English Indians on the flanks doing considerable execu- 
tion, all the French army were put to the rout, and for five 
miles the pursuit continued, in which seventeen officers, 
among whom were the first and second in command, were 
made prisoners. Next morning Sir Wm. Johnson sent a trum- 
pet to the French commandant, with a list of the seventeen 
officers that had been taken, to convince him of the inutility 
of further resistance. The commandant found all Sir Wil- 
liam Johnson's intelligence to be perfectly true, and in a few 
hours a capitulation was signed, by which six hundred and 
seven men, of which the garrison consisted, were to march 
out with the honours of war, to be embarked on the lake, and 
carried to New York, but protected from the barbarity of the 
Indians. The women and children were carried to Montreal, 
and the conqueror treated the sick and wounded in a manner 
so lituTjane, as to prove himself worthy of victory. Thus, for 
a second time, this self-taught general obtained an entire tri- 
umph over the boasted discipline of the French arms. But 
that was his least praise. Though eleven hundred Indians 
followed him to the field, he restrained them within regular 
bounds."* 

While affiacting at home to consider the colonists as of little 
efficiency in the field, and even to deride their humblest pre- 

* Vol. xl. p. 237. 



OP THE COLONISTS. ^^^ 

tensions to the military character,* the mother country inces- SFXT. iv. 
santly called upon their assemblies for more levies, wilh pro- ^^.^'n^'*^ 
testations of the indispensableness of their fullest co-operation. 
They were required, in 1760, to raise and equip, if practi- 
cable, at least as large a body of men as they had sent forth the 
preceding year; and they obeyed with an alacrity equal to that 
which they had manifested, when it seemed necessary for them 
to make extreme efforts, to avoid being overrun by the com- 
mon enemy, let in through the incapacity of the British com- 
manders, Massachusetts supplied besides, troops to guard 
Louisbourg, Halifax, and Lunenburg, and entirely garrisoned 
Annapolis, Fort Cumberland at Chignecto, and Fort Frederick 
at St. Johns. It was not merely land forces that were furnish- 
ed by New England. Her seamen served in such numbers on 
board the British ships of war, that her merchants were com- 
pelled to navigate their trading vessels with Indians and ne- 
groes.f More than four hundred privateers, as I have already 
had occasion to remark, issued, during the war, from the North 
American ports, ravaged the French West India Islands, and 
distressed to the utmost the commerce of France in all parts 
of the world. 

During the years 1760 and 1761, the southern colonies 
were involved in hostilities with the Cherokee Indians. These, 
instigated by the French, made the most destructive inroads, 
and required some arduous campaigns to be reduced to inac- 
tion. In 1763, a general Indian war unexpectedly broke 
out, of a most disastrous and alarming character. It threat- 
ened the loss of some of the important posts which had 
been wrested from the French, and depopulated a great part 
of the western frontiers. Franklin, being asked, on his exa- 
mination before the House of Commons, whether this was not 
a war for America only; answered, that it was rather a conse- 
quence or remains of the former one, the Indians not having 
been thoroughly pacified; that the Americans bore much the 
greater share of the expense; and that it was put an end to 
by the army under general Bouquet, consisting of about three 
hundred regulars, and above one thousand Pennsylvanians. 

The pecuniary charges incurred by the colonists in the seven 
years war, greatly exceeded the amount of the sums which were 
allotted to them by the British Parliament, as an indemnity. 

* See Note I. 

-j- It was asserted, without contradiction, in the House of Commons, 
in the debate of March 11, 1778, on the state of the British navy, that 
ten thousand of the seamen employed in it during the war of 1756, 
were natives of North America. 



133^ MILITARY EFFORTS 

PART I. The excess was two millions five hundred thousand pounds, 
'^-^■^'-^^ not taking into the account the extraordinary supplies granted 
by the colonial assemblies. Their whole disbursement did 
not fall short of three millions and a half; a sum far more 
onerous for them, in the proportion of their ability and ha- 
bits, than that w'hicb was expended by the crown, great as it 
was, could have been for the British people. 

On the termination of the struggle in Canada, in 1760, and 
the extinction of danger from the French in North America, 
the provinces were fairly entitled to an exemption from all 
contribution to the exterior military enterprises of the mother 
country; at least until the deep wounds they had received in 
their finances, and the most valuable part of their population, 
should be healed A considerable body of native troops was, 
however, drawn from them, to assist in the reduction of the 
French and Spanish West India Islands; and Massachusetts 
raised in 1763, three thousand two hundred and twenty, as her 
quota, for the object of "securing the British dominions, and 
particularly the conquests in her neighbourhood." " Many 
of the common soldiers," says the historian, Gordon, "who 
gained such laurels, by their singular bravery on the plains of 
Abraham, when Wolfe died in the arms of victory, were na- 
tives of the Massachusetts Bay. When Marti nico was attack- 
ed in 1761, and the British force was greatly weakened by 
death and sickness, the timely arrival of the New England 
troops enabled the former to prosecute the reduction of the 
island to an happy issue. A part of the British force being 
now about to sail from thence for the Havanna, the New 
Englanders, whose health had been much impaired by service 
and the climate, were sent off in three ships, to their native 
country for recovery. Before they had completed their voyage, 
they found themselves restored, ordered the ships about, steer- 
ed immediately for the Havanna, arrived when the Britrsh 
were too much reduced to expect success, and by their junc- 
tion, served to immortalize afresh, the glorious first of August, 
old style, in the surrender of the place on that memorable day; 
they exhibited, at the same time, the most signal evidence of 
devotedness to the parent state. Their fidelity, activity, and 
courage, were such as to gain the approbation and confidence 
of the British officers."* 

There are some general considerations which place in strong 

* History of the American Revolution, vol. i. page 103. The writer 
received his information not only from public, but from private, sources , 
he cites particularly Brooke Woodcock, Esq. of Saffron Walden, whc 
served at the taking' of Belleisle, Martinico, and the Havanna. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 133 

relief, the merit of the multitude of Americans who served as sect. iv. 
volunteers in these campaigns. They cannot be supposed to '^^''^''>»^ 
have been tempted by the slender pay which they received; 
for, tlieir domestic affairs were, in all cases, of a nature to 
suffer greatly by their absence: They could not be incited by 
hopes of preferment, since the provincial forces were uniform- 
ly disbanded on a peace; the provincial officers no further 
rewarded by commissions than the enlisting of men made it 
necessary; and the vacancies which occurred among the re- 
gulars, filled with Europeans: They were liable to perpetual 
mortification by invidious distinctions in favour of the British 
troops; they were penuriously praised when their prowess was 
unquestionable, and outrageously censured when their conduct 
gave the least opening to detraction. Under such circum- 
stances, there are no other motives to be assigned for their 
self-devotion, except public spirit, — a sense of duty — a native 
manliness of character. In truth, the colonists were unspar- 
ing of their resources and their blood, not merely, from a belief 
that the cause was their own, and from a resolution to protect 
themselves to the utmost of their ability; but as members of the 
British empire, eager for its prosperity, and deeply interested 
in all its concerns; proud of their kindred and connection with 
the British nation, and sympathetic in its prejudices and pas- 
sions. Whoever gives attention to the public papers of the 
era of the seven years war, will be convinced, that they enter- 
ed into the rivalry between England and France, with the 
keenness of the school of Pitt, and rejoiced in the success 
of the British arms, not more as ministerial to their security, 
than to the ascendency of the British power and the glory of 
the British name. 

10. At the peace of Paris, of 1763, England found herself 
the acknowledged mistress of the whole continent of America 
north of the Gulf of Mexico, and assured of a permanent naval 
supremacy over the nations of Europe. It is a proposition 
now hardly disputed, even as an exercise of ingenuity, that for 
this vast extension of her power, and the triumph of her for- 
tunes over those of France, she was largely indebted to the 
exiles who adhered to her dominion. Originally, they 
had preserved the Atlantic territory from the occupation of 
her enemies. No great sagacity is required to perceive, that 
had the French settled and retained it, she must have fallen 
into the secondary rank as a naval and commercial power.* 

* " It appears," says Hutchinson, (vol. i. chap, i.) " that the Massachu- 
setts people took possession of the country at a very critical time. 



134 MILITARY EFFORTS 

PART I. What she became, she never could have become, without the 
^-^"^'^^w/ thirteen colonies; and not unless they had become what their 
industry, spirit, and intelligence, made them. Whatever obli- 
gations, then, she can pretend, with any colour of plausibility, 
to have conferred, must fall far short of those which she re- 
ceived. Their instrumentality in her elevation and the de- 
pression of her rival, manifestly overbalances even the degree 
of protection which she herself claims to have extended. And 
the duty of gratitude appears the more exigent, from the con- 
sideration of that British feeling, to which I have referred 
in the preceding page, as the main spring of their prodigious 
efforts in seconding all her aims. 

It will seem scarcely credible, that the politicians of Eng- 
land earnestly debated, during the negotiations for the peace 
of 1763, and while parliament was yet complimenting the 
colonies for their loyal sacrifices, whether Canada should not 
be restored to the French, and the Island of Guadaloupe re- 
tained in preference. The odium of this controversy, which, 
in its general purport, put out of question every claim and se- 
curity of their American brethren, and admitted of no calcula- 
tion but one of mere commercial profit and loss, was greatly 
aggravated by the principal grounds of argument with some 
of the most eminent writers of the day, who embraced the 
affirmative — " that the colonies were already large and nu- 
merous enough, and that the French ought to be left in North 
America to prevent their increase, lest they should become not 
only useless, but dangerous to Great Britain." " It was in- 
sinuated," says Russel,* " by some of our keen-sighted politi- 



Richlieu, In all probabilit}-, would have planted his colony nearer the 
sun, if he could have found any place vacant. De Monts and company 
had acquired a thorough knowledge of all the coast, from Cape Sable's 
beyond Cape Cod, in 1604; indeed it does not appear that they then 
went round or to the bottom of Massachusetts Bay. Had they once 
gained footing there, they would have prevented the English. The 
Frenchified court of king Charles I. would, at the treaty of St, Ger- 
main's, have given up any claim to Massachusetts Bay as readily as they 
did to Acadie ; for the French could make out no better title to Penob- 
scot and the other parts of Acadie, than they could to Massachusetts. 
The little plantation at New Plymouth would have been no greater bar 
to the French in one place than in the other. The Dutch, the next 
year, would have quietly possessed themselves of Connecticut river, 
unless the French, instead of the English, had prevented them. Whe- 
ther the people of either nation would have persevered, is uncertain. 
If they had done it, the late contest for the dominion of North America 
would have been between France and Holland, and the commerce of 
England would have borne a very different proportion to that of the 
rest of Europe from what it does at present." 
* Modern Europe, part ii. letter xsxv. 



OF THE COLONISTS. 



135 



cians, that the security provided by the retention of Canada, SECT. iv. 
for the English settlements in North America, asivell as for ^--''^'''^-' 
their extension in the cession of Florida by Spain, would prove 
a source of new evils. It would embolden our old colonies 
to shake off the controul of the mother country, since they no 
longer stood in need of her protection, and erect themselves 
into independent states." Franklin, who, at this period, as 
agent of some of the provinces at the court of London, watch- 
ed paternally over the interests of the whole, found himself 
under the necessity of combating these doctrines in an elaborate 
tract, which I have already noticed. The very existence of 
the "Canada-Pamphlet" is an eternal reproach to Great Bri- 
tain; and there is an increase of shame, from its being an ap- 
peal, not to her generosity or her justice, but to her separate 
interests. Upon these, the sagacious author, deeming every 
higher consideration, idle and misplaced, laid all stress; and 
the same thing may be said of the British cabinet, on a refe- 
rence to the tenour of the discussions respecting the peace both 
in and out of parliament. Amid the violent discontents which 
the improvident treaty of Paris excited, consolation was found, 
not, as some of her writers have gratuitously alledged, in the 
exemption of the colonies from the annoyance of a European 
enemy, and their increased ability to overawe the savages, — 
but in " the wide scope for projects of political ambition, and 
the boundless field for speculations of commercial avidity, 
which the undivided sovereignty of the vast continent of Ame- 
rica, with the exclusive enjoyment of its trade, seemed to open 
to the British nation."* We may judge how the colonies 
would have fared with the " tory counsels," to whose influence 
the demerits of the peace were attributed, had not the retention 
of Canada fallen within their selfish and corrupt views, when 
we advert to the fact, that the execrable suggestion above 
mentioned came from the whigs. To display it in its true light, 
as well as to illustrate the temper of mind with which the great 
champion of the colonies had to contend, I cannot do better 
than quote his bold language on the point. 

"But what is the prudent policy inculcated to obtain this end 
— security of dominion over our colonies? It is, to leave the 
French in Canada to '■check their growth; for otherwise, our 
people may increase infinitely from all causes.' We have al- 
ready seen in what manner the French and their Indians check 
the growth of our colonies. It is a modest word, this check. 
for massacreing men, women, and children." 

* Russel, ibid. 



186 



MILITARY EFFORTS 



PART I. " But if Canada is restored on this principle, will not Britain 
'*-^'''>^^-' be guilty of all the blood to be shed, all the murders to be 
committed, in order to check this dreaded growth of our own 
people? Will not this be telling the French in plain terms, 
that the horrid barbarities they perpetrated with Indians, on 
our colonists, are agreeable to us; and that they need not ap- 
prehend the resentment of a government with whose views 
they so happily concur? Will not the colonies view it in this 
light? Will they have reason to consider themselves any 
longer as subjects and children, when they find their cruel 
enemies hallooed upon them by the country from whence they 
sprung; the government that owes them protection, as it re- 
quires their obedience? Is not this the most likely means of 
driving them into the arms of the French, who can invite 
them by an otTer of security, their own government chooses 
not to offer them?" 

" If it be, after all, thought necessary to check the growth 
of our colonies, give me leave to propose a method less cruel. 
The method I mean, is that which was dictated by the Egyp- 
tian policy, when the ' infinite increase,' of the children of 
Israel, was apprehended as dangerous to the state. Let an act 
of parliament then be made, enjoining the colony midwives 
to stifle in the birth every third or fourth child. By this means 
you may keep the colonies to their present size." 

1 1. 1 have made no assertion in treating the topics upon which 
I have enlarged so much, of the military merits of America, 
and the nature of the protection extended to her by the mother 
country, which it would not be in my power to vindicate by 
British authority of the highest class. And I cannot refrain, 
though it is done at the risk of fatiguing my readers by what 
may have the air of repetition, from seeking in the records of 
the British Parliament for a general confirmation of what I 
have advanced. I find this, with every recommendation of un- 
questionable validity, and sententious eloquence, in a speech 
of David Hartley, on the American question, delivered in the 
House of Commons, in the year 1775. That gentleman long 
held a conspicuous rank in Parliament; lived in the closest in- 
timacy with the most eminent British statesmen of the time; 
concluded, as the minister plenipotentiary of Great Britain, the 
definitive treaty of 1783, with the United States; and though a 
zealous friend of justice and the injured colonies, established, 
with all parties at home, the character of a devoted patriot. 
What follows from him will protect me from the charge of 



OF THE COLONISTS. 



137 



national partiality in my representations, and serve me as a SECT. IV. 
useful recapitulation of facts. ^w^^-v-^ 

Mr. Hartley said, — 

" I* would wish to state to the House, the merits of this 
question of requisitions to the colonies, and to see upon what - 
principles it is founded; to revise the accounts between Great 
Britain and them. We hear of nothing now but the protec- 
tion we have given to them; of the immense expense incurreil 
on their account. We are told tliat ihey have done nothing 
for themselves; that they pay no taxes; in sbort, every thing 
is asserted about America to serve the present turn, without ibe 
least regard to truth. I would have these matters fairly 
sifted out." 

"To begin with the late war, — of '56. The Americans 
turned the success of the war at both ends of the line. Ge- 
neral Monckton took Beausejour in Nova Scotia, with fifteen 
hundred provincial troops, and about two hundred regu- 
lars. Sir William Johnson, in the other part of America, 
changed the face of the war to success, with a provincial 
army, which took Baron Dieskau prisoner. But, Sir, the 
glories of the war under the united British and American arms, 
are recent in every one's memory. Suffice it to decide this 
question; that the Americans bore, even in our judgment, more 
than their full proportion; that this House did annually vote 
them an acknowledgment of their zeal and strenuous efforts, 
and compensation for the excess of their zeal and expenses, 
above their due proportion. They kept, one year with ano- 
ther, twenty-five thousand men on foot, and lost in the war 
the flower of their youth. How strange it must appear to 
them, to hear of nothing down to the year 1763, but en- 
comiums upon their active zeal and strenuous eil<jrls; and 
then, no longer after than the year 1764, in such a trice 
of time, to see the tide turn, and from that hour to this, to 
hear it asserted that they were a burden upon the common 
cause; asserted even in that same parliament which had voted 
them compensations for the liberality and excess of their 
service." 

" Nor did they stint their services to North America. They 
followed the British arms out of their continent to the Havan- 
na, and Martinique, after the complete conquest of America. 
And so they had done in the preceding war. They were not 
grudging of their exertions — they were at the siege of Car- 
thagena: — yet, what was Carthagena to them, but as members 

Vol. I.~S 



138 MILITARY EFFORTS 

PART I. of the common cause, friends of the glory of this country! 
'•^^^•'^■'^ In that war too, Sir, they took Louisbourg from the French, 
single handed, without any European assistance; as mettled 
an enterprise as any in our history! an everlasting memorial 
to the zeal, courage, and perseverance of the troops of New 
England. The men themselves dragged the cannon over 
morasses, which had always been thought impassable, where, 
neither horses nor oxen could go, and they carried the shot 
upon their backs. And what was their reward for this for- 
ward and spirited enterprise; for the reduction of this Ame- 
rican Dunkirk? Their reward. Sir, you know very well — it 
was given up for a barrier to the Dutch. The only conquest 
in that war, which you had to give up, and which would have 
been an effectual barrier to them against the French power in 
America, though gained by themselves, was surrendered for 
a foreign barrier. As a substitute for this, you settled Hali- 
fax for a place cVarmes, leaving the limits of the province of 
Nova Scotia as a matter of contest with the French, which 
could not fail to prove, as it did, the cause of another war. 
Had you kept Louisbourg, instead of settling Halifax, the 
Americans could say, at least, that there would not have been 
that pretext for imputing the late war to their account. It 
has been their forwardness in your cause, that made them the 
objects of the French resentment. In the war of 1744, at 
your requisition, they were the aggressors on the French in 
America. We know the orders given to Mons. D'Anville, to 
destroy and lay all their sea port towns in ashes, and we know 
the cause of that resentment; it was to revenge their conquest 
of Louisbourg." 

" Whenever Great Britain has declared war, they have 
taken their part. They were engaged in king William's wars, 
and queen Anne's, even in their infancy. They conquered 
Acadia in the last century, for us; and we then gave it up. 
Again, in queen Anne's war, they conquered Nova Scotia, 
which, from that time, has always belonged to Great Britain. 
They have been engaged in more than one expedition to Ca- 
nada, ever foremost to partake of honour and danger with the 
mother country." 

" Well, Sir, what have we done for them? Have we con- 
quered the country for them from the Indians? Have we 
cleared it? Have we drained it? Have we made it habitable? 
What have we done for them? I believe, precisely nothing at 
all, but just keeping watch and ward over their trade, that 
they should receive nothing but from ourselves, at our own 
price. I will not positively say that we have spent nothing; 



OF THE COLONISTS. 139 

though I don't recollect any such article upon our journals: sect. IV. 
but I mean any material expense in setting them out as colo- v-^-v-«w 
nists. The royal military government of Nova Scotia cost, 
indeed, not a little sum; above =g500,000 for its plantation, 
and its first years. Had your other colonies cost any thing 
similar either in their outset or support, there nould have been 
something to say on that side; but, instead of that, they have 
been left to themselves for one hundred or one hundred and 
fifty years, upon the fortune and capital of private adventur- 
ers, to encounter every difficulty and danger. What towns 
have we built for them.'' What desert have we cleared.'' What 
country have we conquered for them from the Indians.'' Name 
the officers — name the troops — the expeditions — their dates. 
Where are they to be found. ■^ Not in thejournalsof this king- 
dom. They are no where to be found." 

" In all the wars which have been common to us and them, 
they have taken their full share. But in all their own dan- 
gers, in the difficulties belonging separately to their situation, 
in all the Indian wars which did not immediately concern us, 
we left them to themselves to struggle their way through. 
For the whim of a minister, you can bestow half a million to 
build a town, and to plant a royal colony of Nova Scotia; a 
greater sum than you have bestowed upon every other colony 
together." 

" And notwithstanding all these, which are the real facts, 
now that they have struggled through their difficulties, and 
begin to hold up their heads, and to show that empire which 
promises to be the foremost in the world, we claim them and 
theirs, as implicitly belonging to us, without any consideration 
of their own rights. We charge them with ingratitude, 
without the least regard to truth, just as if this kingdom had 
for a century and a half, attended to no other object; as if all 
our revenue, all our power, all our thought had been bestowed 
upon them, and all our national debt had been contracted in 
the Indian wars of America; totally forgetting the subordina- 
tion in commerce and manufactures, in which we have bound 
them, and for which, at least, we owe them help towards their 
protection." 

" Look at the preamble of the act of navigation, and every 
American act, and see if the interest of this country js not the 
avowed object. If they make a hat or a piece of steel, an 
act of parliament calls it a nuisance; a tilting hammer, a steel 
furnace, must be abated in America as a nuisance. Sir, I 
speak from facts. I call your books of statutes and journals 



140 MILITARY EFFORTS 

PART. I. to witness. With the least recollection, every one must ac- 

^^^^"•^-^ knowledge the truth of these facts." 

" But it is said, the peace establishment of North America 
has been, and is, very expensive to this country. Sir, for 
what it has been, let us take the peace establishment before 
1739, and after 1748. All that I can find in your journals is, 
four companies kept up at New York, and three companies in 
Carolina. As to the four companies at New York, this country 
should know best why they put themselves to that expense, or 
whether really they were at any expense at all; for these were 
companies of fictitious men. Unless the money was repaid 
into the treasury, it was applied to some other purpose; 
these companies were not a quarter full. In the year 1754, 
two of them were sent up to Albany, to attend commissioners 
to treat with the six nations, to impress them with a high idea 
of our military power; to display all the pomp and circum- 
stance of war before them, in hopes to scare them; when in 
truth, we made a very ridiculous figure. The whole comple- 
ment of two companies did not exceed thirty tattered, tottering 
invalids, fitter to scare the crows. This information I have 
had fronj eye witnesses." 

••' It has not fallen in my way to hear any account of the 
three Carolina companies: These are trifles. The substantial 
question is, — What material expense have you been at in the 
periods alluded to, for the peace establishment of North Ame- 
rica.'' Ransack your journals, search your public offices for 
array or ordnance expenses. Make out your bill, and let us see 
what it is. No one yet knows it. Had there been any such, 
I believe the administration would have produced it before 
now, with aggravation." 

" But is not the peace establishment of North America 
now very high, and very expensive.'' I would answer that by 
another question: Why should the peace establishment since 
the late war, and the total expulsion of the French interest, be 
higher than it was before the late war, and when the French 
possessed above half the American continent .-* If it be so, 
there must be some singular reason." 

" I cannot suppose that you mean under the general term of 
North America, to saddle all the expenses of Canada, Nova 
Scotia, Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Florida, and the West 
Indies, upon the old colonies of North America. You cannot 
mean to keep the sovereignty, the property, the possession 
(these are the terms of the cession in the treaty of 1763) to 
yourselves, and lay the expense of the military establishment^ 
which you think proper to keep up, upon the old colonies," 



OF THE COLONISTS. 141 

" Sir, the colonies never thought of interfering in the pre- sect. iv. 
rogative of war or peace; but if this nation can be so unjust •^-^"-^^'^■^ 
as to meditate the saddling the expense of your new conquests 
separately upon them, they ought to have had a voice in set- 
tling the terms of peace. It is you, on this side of the water, 
who have first brought out the idea of separate interests, by 
planing separate and distinct charges. It was their men aiid 
their money, which had conquered North America and (he 
West Indies, as well as yours, though you seized all the spoils; 
but they never thought of dictating to you, what you sl>oald 
keep, or what you should give up, little dreaming that ,ou 
reserved the expense of your military governmenis for them. 
Who gave up the Havanna? Who gave up Mariinique? Who 
gave up Guadaloupe, with Marigalante? Who gave up Santa 
Lucia? Who gave up the Newfoundland fishery? Who gave 
up all these wiihout their consent, without ilieir participation, 
without their consultation, and, after all, without equivalents? 
Sir, if your colonies had bui been permitted io have gathered 
up the crumbs which have fallen from your table, they would 
gladly have supported the whole military establishment of 
North America." 

" Your colonies have now shown you the value of lands 
in North America; and therefore you have vested in the crown 
the sovereignty, property, and possession of infinite tracts of 
land, perhaps as extensive as all Europe, which the crown 
may dispose of at its own price, as the land rises m America, 
and grants become invaluable; and to enable the crown to sup- 
port an arbitrary, military government, till these lands rise to 
their future immense value, you are casting about to saddle 
the expense either upon the American or the British supplies. 

" This country is very liberal in its boasting of its protec- 
tion and parental kindness to America. It is for that purpose 
that we have converted the province of Canada into an abso- 
lute and military government, and have established there 
the Romish church, so obnoxious to our ancient, and Pro- 
testant colonies. What security, what protection do they 
derive? In what sort are they the better for the conquest of 
the French dominions, if we take that opportunity to establish 
a government, civil, military, and ecclesiastical, in the utmost 
degree hostile to the government of our own provinces, and 
wiih the intent to set a thorn in their sides? Is this affection 
and parental kindness? Surely you do not expect that they 
should be taxed and talliaged to pay for this rod of iron, 
which you are preparing for them !" 



142 MILITARY EFFORTS, «^'C. 

PART. I, « Now, Sir, I come to a point, in which I think you may 
"-^^^"^^ be said to have given some protection, I mean the protection 
of your fleet to the American commerce. And even here I 
am at a loss by what terms to call it; whether you are pro- 
tecting yourselves or them. Theirs are your cargoes, your 
manufactures, your commerce, your navigation. Every ship 
from America is bound to Britain. None enter an American 
port but British ships and men. While you are defending 
the American commerce, you are defending Leeds and 
Halifax, Sheffield and Birmingham, Manchester and Hull, 
Bristol and Liverpool, London, Dublin, Glasgow. However, 
as our fleet does protect whatever commerce belongs to ihem, 
let that be set to the account. It is an argument to them as 
well as to us. As it has been the sole policy of this kingdom, 
for ages, by the operation of every commercial act of par- 
liament, to make the American commerce totally subservient 
to our own convenience, the least that we owe to them in 
return is protection." 



143 



SECTION V. 

OK I HE BENEFITS REAPED BY GREAT BRITAIN FROM THE 
AMERICAN TRADE. 

1, If SO immense a gain, of which she retains a mighty SECT.V. 
part in her actual North American possessions, accrued to ^-^">'-^»' 
Great Britain from the military efforls of the thirteen colonies, 
the advantages which she found in her commercial connexion 
with them, were not less considerable. Before any thing had 
been expended upon them, they began to enrich the treasury, 
and feed the strength, of the mother country, by augmenting 
her shipping, giving double activity to her trades and ma- 
nufactures, and even accelerating the increase of her popula- 
tion. These effects were quickly perceived and announced 
by those of her earliest writers in political economy, to whom 
she has assigned the first rank among their cotemporaries. To 
begin with the testimony of Sir Josiah Child. " England has 
constantly improved in people, since our settlement upon the 
plantations in America. We are very great gainers by the 
direct trade of New with Old England. Our yearly expor- 
tations of English manufactures, malt and other goods from 
hence thither, amounting, in my opinion, to ten times the va- 
lue of what is imported from thence, which calculation I do 
not make at random, but upon mature consideration, and per- 
adventure, upon as much experience in this trade, as any other 
person will pretend to,"* " The plantations," says Davenant, 
" are a spring of wealth to this nation; they work for us, and 
their treasure centres all here. It is better our islands should 
be supplied from the northern colonies than from England — 
the provisions to be sent to them would be the unimproved 
product of the earth, whereas the goods which we send to the 
northern colonies, are such whose improvement may be justly 
said, one with another, to be near four -fourths of the value of 
the whole commodity."! 



* Discourse on Trade, chap. x. 
f Discourse on Plantation Trade. 



144 COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS, &C. 

PART I. " An immense wealth," says Gee,* " has accrued to us by 
•-^^/■-^ the labour and industry of those people (hat have settled in our 
colonies. Of all the methods of enlarging our trade, was the 
finding out of our plantations — the tobacco and sugar planta- 
tions were indeed the cause of increasing our shipping and 
navigation. If we examine into the circumstances of the in- 
habitants of our plantations, it will appear that not one-fourth 
part of their product redounds to their own profit. There are 
very (ew trading or manufacturing towns in the kingdom, but 
have some dependence on the plantation trade." 

" New England and the northern colonies have not com- 
modities and products enough to stnd us in return for pur- 
chasing their necessary clothing, but are under very great 
difficulties, and therefore any ordinary sort sells with them; 
and when they are grown out of fashion with us, they are new 
fashioned enough there; and therefore those places are the great 
markets we have to dispose of such goods, which are gene- 
rally sent at the risk of the shop-keepers and traders of 
England, who are the great exporters, and not the inhabitants 
of the colonies, as some have imagined. As the colonies are 
a marker for those sort of goods, so they are a receptacle for 
young merchants who have not stocks of their own; and there- 
fore all our plantations are filltd vviih such who receive the 
consignments of their friends from hence; and when they 
have got a sufftciept stock to trade witn, ihej generally return 
home, and other young men take their places; so that the con- 
tinual motion and intercourse our people have in the colonies, 
may be compared to bees of a hive, which go out empty, but 
come back again loaded, by which means the foundation of 
many families is laid. The numbers of sailors and other trades- 
men, who have all their dependence upon this traffic, are pro- 
digiously great. Our factors, who frequent the northern co- 
lonies, being under difficulties to make returns for such goods 
as they dispose of, what gold, silver, logwood, and other com- 
modities they trade for upon the Spanish coast, is sent home 
to England; as also oyl, whale-fins, and many other goods. 
Likewise another great part in returns is made by ships, built 
there, and disposed of in the Streights, and other parts of Eu- 
rope, and the money remitted to us." 

" There is another advantage we receive from our planta- 
tions, which is hardly so much as thought on; I mean the 
prodigious increase of our shipping, by the timber trade be- 
tween Portugal, &c. and our plantations, which ought to have 



* On the Trade and Navigation of Great Britain, chap. x.^xi. 



OF GREAT BRITAIN. 145 

ail possible encouragement; Tor by it we have crept into all SECT. v. 
the corners of Europe, and become the common carriers in ^■^^'^'•^ 
the Mediterranean, as well as between the Mediterranean, 
Holland, Hambr'o, and the Baltic, and this is the cause of so 
great an addition to our shipping, and the reason why the 
Dutch, &c. are so exceedingly sunk." 

" We have a great many young men who are bred to the 
sea, and have friends to support them; if they cannot get em- 
ployment at home, they go to New England, and the northern 
colonies, with a cargo of goods, which they there sell at 
a very great profit, and with the produce build a ship, and 
purchase a loading of lumber, and sail for Portugal or the 
Streights, &c. and after disposing of their cargoes there, fre- 
quently ply from port to port in the Mediterranean, till they 
have cleared so much money as will in a good part pay for the 
first cost of the cargo carried out by them, and then perhaps 
sell their ships, come home, take up another cargo from their 
employers, and so go back and build another ship; by this 
means multitudes of seamen are brought up, and upon a war 
the nation better provided with a greater number of sailors 
than hath been heretofore known. Here the master becomes 
merchant also, and many of them gain by this lumber trade 
great estates, and a vast treasure is thereby yearly brought into 
the kingdom, in a way new and unknown to our forefathers, 
for indeed it is gaining the timber trade, (heretofore carried 
on by the Danes and Swedes,) our plantations being nearer 
the markets of Portugal and Spain than they are." 

The great productiveness of the colonies to the mother 
country, thus recognized before the expiration, and at the be- 
ginning, of the eighteenth century, increased in a geometrical 
progression from that period, and drew equally pointed ac- 
knowledgments from later writers. In the year 1728, Sir 
William Keith, a man of superior sagacity, who had occupied 
the station of governor of Pennsylvania, and investigated per- 
sonally and in complete detail, the commercial relations of 
North America with the other parts of the British empire, 
submitted to the British government a very able discourse on 
the subject,* in which he presented the following summary of 
what he styled " the principal benefits then arising to Great 
Britain from the trade of the colonies." 

"1. The colonies take off and consume above one-sixth 
part of the woollen manufactures exported from Great Britain; 

* See tlie whole of this curious and interesting' paper, in Burfc's His- 
tory of Virginia, vol. ii. chap. li. 

Vol. I.— T 



146 COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 

PART I. which is the chief staple of England, and the main support of 
x^^^'"^^ the landed interest. 

" 2. They take off and consume more than double that 
value in linen and callicoes, which are partly the product of 
Britain and Ireland, and partly the profitable returns made for 
that product when carried to foreign countries. 

" 3. The luxury of the colonies, which increases daily, 
consumes great quantities of English manufactured silks, ha- 
berdashery, household furniture, and trinkets of all sorts, as 
also a very considerable value in East India goods. 

" 4. A great revenue is raised to the crown of Britain by 
returns made in the produce o^f the plantations, especially to- 
bacco; which at the same time helps England to bring nearer 
to a balance her unprofitable trade with France. 

" 5. These colonies promote the interest and trade of Bri- 
tain, by a vast increase of shipping and seamen, which enables 
them to carry great quantities of fish to Spain, Portugal, Leg- 
horn, &c.; furs, logwood, and rice, to Holland, where they 
keep Great Britain considerably in the balance of trade with 
those countries. 

" 6. If reasonably encouraged, the colonies are now in a 
condition to furnish Britain with as much of the following 
commodities as it can demand, viz: masting for the navy and 
all sorts of timber, hemp, flax, pitch, tar, oil, rosin,, copper 
ore, with pig and bar iron; by means whereof the balance of 
trade to Russia and the Baltic, may be very much reduced in 
favour of Great Britain. 

" 7. The profits arising to all those colonies by trade, are 
returned in bullion, or rather useful effects, to Great Britain; 
where the superfluous cash, and other riches, acquired in 
America, must centre; which is not one of the least securities 
that Britain has, to keep the colonies always in due subjection. 

"8. The colonies upon the main are the granary of America, 
and a necessary support to the sugar plantations, in the West 
Indies, which could not subsist without them." 

To exemplify further the nature of this commercial inter- 
course, for Great Britain, I will quote the case of Virginia and 
Maryland, as Macpherson represents it for the year 1731, 
from the best authorities of that day.* 

" Virginia and Maryland are most valuable acquisitions to 
Britain, as well for their great staple commodity, tobacco, as 
for pitch, tar, furs, deer skins, walnut tree planks, iron in pigs, 
and medicinal drugs. Both together send annually to Great 



* Annals of Commerce, vol. iii. 



OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



Britain, 60,000 hogsheads of tobacco, weighing, one with sect. V. 
another, 600 pounds weight, which at 2|d. per pound, comes v-^^'^'''"*^ 
to ^375,000. And the shipping employed to bring home 
their tobacco, must be at least 24,000 tons; which at ^10 per 
ton, is ^240,000, the value of the shipping; the greatest part 
thereof by far being English-built, continually and constantly 
fitted and repaired in England. The freight, at 1/. 10s. per 
hogshead, (the lowest,) is ^90,000; and the petty charges and 
commission, on each hogshead, not less than £1 or ^60,000; 
which, making together ^150,000, we undoubtedly receive 
from those two provinces upon tobacco only. The net pro- 
ceeds of the tobacco may be ^225,000, on which there may 
be about five per cent, commission and petty charges, being 
^11,250. There is also imported in the tobacco ships from 
those two provinces, lumber, to the value of ^15,000, two- 
thirds whereof is clear gain, it not costing ^4,000 in that 
country, first cost in goods; and as it is the master's privilege, 
there is no freight paid for it. Skins and furs, about ^'6,000 
value; ^4,000 of which is actual gain to England. So the 
whole gain to England amounts to about ^180,000, annually: 
and moreover the whole produce of these two provinces is 
paid for in goods." 

Postlethwayt, who published his Universal Dictionary of 
Trade in the middle of the last century, bears a most emphatic 

' lugeneral testimony. " Our trade and navigation," says this 
"<^rudite merchant, " are greatly increased by our colonies; they 
are a source of treasure and naval power to this kingdom. 
Before their settlements — our manufactures were few — and 
those but indifferent — the number of English merchants very 
small, and the whole shipping of the nation much inferior to 
what now belongs to the northern colonies only. These are 
certain facts. But since their establishment, our situation has 
altered for the better almost to a degree beyond credibility. 
Our manufactures are prodigiously increased, — chiefly by 
the demand for them in the plantations, where they at least 
take off one-half, and supply us with many valuable commo- 
dities for exportation, which is as great an emolument to the 

\ mother kingdom as to the plantations themselves," &c. 

\ The North American export trade of Great Britain amount* 

\^ed, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, to something 

\ess than four hundred thousand pounds sterling; then no in- 

\nsiderable portion of her whole exports. It had attained 

^re the separation — to three millions and an half sterling, 

e^y one-fourth of her whole cotemporaneous export trade, 

^''fxoduct of centuries of intercourse with all the world. 

,vbo. 



\ 






COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 



ART I. The particular instance of (he Pennsylvania trade furnished an 

-^-v--^^ illustration of the general increase, which struck the British 

statesmen with admiration. In the year 1704, that province 

consumed only ggll,459 in value of foreign commodities: in 

1772, fifty times as much; in this last year the export to it 
from Great Britain was upwards of half a million sterling. 

The exports to the North American colonies alone — ex- 
cluding the portion of the African trade to be set down to 
their account, — was one million on an average, from 1739 to 
1756 — two million three hundred thousand from 1756 to 
1773 — three millions and an half on a medium of the years 
1771, 1772, 1773. The proportion of British goods to foreign 
goods exported to North America, was of three-fourths British 
and one-fourth foreign; whereas to the West Indies, it was of 
two-thirds British and one-third foreign. 

The foreign and circuitous trade of the northern colonies, 
which was prosecuted only by a necessary relaxation, or by 
an evasion, of the navigation act, redounded equally to the 
profit of the mother country. It enabled the colonies to pay, 
and consequently led them to call, for a greater quantity of 
her manufactures. It is thus fully and accurately described 
in the third volume of Macpherson's Annals. " The old 
northern colonies in America, it is well known, had very few 
articles fit for the British market; and yet they every year took 
off large quantities of merchandise from Great Britain, for 
which they made payments with tolerable regularity. Thougl. 
they could not, like the Spanish colonists, dig the money out 
of their own soil, they found means to make a great part of 
their remittances in gold and silver dug out of the Spanish 
mines. This they effected by being great carriers, and by a 
circuitous commerce, carried on in small vessels, chiefly with 
the foreign West India settlements, to which they took lum- 
ber of all sorts, fish of an inferior quality, beef, pork, butter, 
horses, poultry, and other live stock; an inferior kind of to- 
bacco, corn, flour, bread, cyder, and even apples, cabbages, 
and onions, &c.; and also vessels, built at a small expense, the 
materials being almost all within themselves; for which they 
received in return mostly silver and gold, some of which re- 
mained as current coin among themselves; but the greatest 
part was remitted home to Britain, and together with bills of 
exchange, generally remitted to London for the proceeds r 
their best fish, sold in the Roman Catholic countries of Euro^ 
served to pay for the goods they received from the mo' 
country. This trade united all the advantages, whio' 
wisest and most philanthropic philosopher, or the ir 



OP GREAT BRITAIN, J 4^ 

^i^tZ^ Iff !f°'- ?"^^. ''''^' *« ^^"^-^ ^'^^ commerce. It sect. v. 
gave bread o the industrious in North America, by carrying v^v^ 
off their lumber, which must otherwise rot on their hands, and 
e.r fish great part of which, without it would be absolutely 

^ve, k„K ; It furnished the West India planters with those 

be at a stand; and it produced a fund for employing a great 
number of industrious manufacturers in Grea? Britain S 
taking off the superfluities, providing for the necessities and 
promoting the happiness of ill concerned." "''''''^'''' '"^ 
Lord Sheflield even, makes the acknowledgment, that bv 
' " ''\i^nn''' ^^'"'"^fce' they must, in (he inttrv.' between the 
years 1700 and 1773, have obtained from c" .. coun 'e^a d 
remitted to Great Britain, upwards of thirty nrllHonsZ^'^ 
payment of goods taken from her, over and above the amouni of 
all their produce and fisheries remitted directly.* Mr Glover 
in the beautiful speech which he delivered at the bar of tiL' 
House of Commons, in 1775, respecting the American trade 
presented among many striking views of its produc.iv ne^ S 
Great Britain, the following: "Though I am convincednhat he 
an^e number of hands at least is devoted to agriculture hVre 
and that the earth at a medium of years hath yfelded the s^e 
^ mcrease; as we have been disposed to consume it all amig 
juiselves, or as our presumption may impute, the scarcity to 
Providence restraining the fertility of our soil for ten yeVrs 
past, in either case we could not spare, as heretofore' our 
grain to the foreigner; a reduction in our e;.ports, one ye r'wiih 
another, of more than ^600,000. The Ame'rica.i sub it 
took place of the British in markets we could no longer iup- 

fl^'f It '^'''- ''"^^'■'•" ^^^'^" ^' ^^^-^^^'^ «nd f?om port 
to port and by a circuition of fresh money, thus acquired by 

tZ"f7' f^^"' ^"^'' ""'"^^^^ '' your manufactures; the 
rents of land increasing at the same time, till the amount of 
exports to North America for the last three vears nding a 
Christmas 1773, stands upon your papers at ten millions 14 
a ImU, or three millions and a half at the annual medium." 
\nA FT °"' '''P°'^ ^"^ foreigners is supplied by colony 
\oduce, tobacco, rice, sugar, &c. through Great Britain, for a 
t .on sterling at a low estimation. There is a known export 
^en exceeding ^200,000, supplied by North Bri.ail. to 
Vnd for Amencan use. The North British colony-export 
Vhtion, IS about ^400,000, by far the greater part to 



'La'^'"'"' ''" "'^ Commerce of the American States, 1784. 
-.vhol€\ 





„,.,., OBLIGATIONS 

The vrbole may oe a , ^ yj^tle 
the tobacco VJ^^^^^.J^^X^^^^^^^ pay 

short of f 2^f "'" part in linen and yam , ^^^ ^^port to 
for them? \ [^'1,^ foreign traffic In the p ^^^^^^ ,^ 

cash, acquired by her ore g ^^^^-^tee, i appe* ^^ •„ ^hat 

his Hou\e from^^ - ^^^^ought to --^tSV ^0,000, 
mi tlie bnen maae, a amounteo w ^ ' g ya- 

and the J>™,ff°rto such ""«*«», to* >;;»,, ^40,000 . 
\ue, flie empM'"'"; " J from thence, "f "° ^ and reverts 
America. The ftax seed i ^^^^^ "^^'''T ' t of grow*- 

tffle to*al 'Telu ; from h"^° *^ °Soo »«"«?«''" 
Urgels « ™»"f Ts X cry of my "f r uV" *"= ^-f 
in reply, «^» ^ * , , 'gupremaej! &- P^^^, ,„„s,der- 
wilhout doors? U'»n J only ven»rU, that" ,f„eisoer, 

iVa capital share." ^_^^^, ,„ fte 

3. ,„the calculation T«t«^-orfe<^^^^^^^^^^ 

House of Com7"!j" ' ort'«'l\"f ^fde and *e North 
America, he '"''"^'J .f'Zd that thts tr de and 

West Indies, »P™,*\^Uen, *»< *« "f . he whole, an* 1 
American were ^"'"''J.es the contexture o the W' ^^ ^„ 

5,em would tear to preMS depreca e the v ^^^^^._^^ 

not entirely ^« l^^on was cm.»cntlV3^^^^^ ^e West 
the parts. T*""?, ,ua„ that the P'^tP.'Lir trade wi* 

*a„ I more «*'»^,*iitely less, "fo^^ ^eans that.hey 
Indies would have been It was hy this m Qjeat Bn- 

IS^'North A»-Salr amV'e bc-«s J »^. Or ^_^^ .^ 
were enahled to y>e ,,^ gjeat '1°"'™', and increase 

'- tt'her -nSnves-, .i« *; ^ffnT^f ln>«viduals; 
XhrshipP'-S a;^*jf-;>;e" *iu* F;t;i%:wTvcr f? 

miUions; whereas that to 
halfamilUon- 



OF GREAT BRITAIN. I 151 

! 

The value of the provisions sent from Great Britain to her sect. v. 
llVest India islands was trifling. They were furnished with the ^"^"^'^^''^ 
/necessaries of life by the North American colonies, and gene- 
rally at about half the price at which they could have been 
supplied from Great Britain. We are told by Dr. Davenant, in 
his Discourse on the Plantation Trade, that, "before the period 
at which he wrote, (1698,) so little care was taken for the con- 
voys which were to protect the supplies of provisions for the 
West India Islands, they must, many times, have perished for 
want, if they had not been supplied by the northern colonies." 
The mother country was, indeed, for the most part, unable to 
supply them at all, and occasionally indebted to the same source 
as her islands, for her vital sustenance. " Our harvests," says 
an able English writer,* "in a series of years were not suffi- 
ciently productive to afford support to the people; whilst 
America was blessed with abundance, and like another Egypt 
to another Canaan, relieved us from the apprehension of a 
want of food, and from the danger of popular commotions, to 
obtain by force what the poor were not able to procure by pur- 
chase. Such was the scarcity of corn in this country, at the 
period preceding the American war, that even the immense 
importations from thence proved no more than a bare supply." 
To this state of things, Mr. Burke thus eloquently alludes, 
in the speech mentioned above. " For some time past the 
old world has been fed from the new. The scarcity which 
you have felt, would have been a desolating famine, if this 
child of your old age, with a true filial piety, with a Roman 
charity, had not put the full breast of its youthful exuberance 
to the mouth of its exhausted parent." 



* Richard Champion, Esq. deputy pay master general of his Bri- 
tannic majesty's forces, (1784,) in his reply to Lord Sheffield's 
pamphlet. On the head of the provision for the West Indies, the same 
enlightened economist makes the following remarks. "It has been 
asked by the noble lord, how did the West India colonies subsist, dur- 
ing the war, when even Canada and Nova Scotia, any more than Eng- 
land, were not open to them, without great expense and risque ? To 
this question, it is to be answered, that the greater part of the Wind- 
ward and Leeward Islands were in possession of the French ; and the 
three which remained in our hands, were frequently reduced to great 
distress. The planters in some of them compromised the labour of 
their slaves for a slender daily food. The situation of Bermuda was 
so deplorable, that some of the poorest inhabitants were actually fa- 
mished ; and it was owing to the humanity of the Americans -who suffer- 
ed them, upon their application, to supply theynselves idth provisions from 
their states, (from Delaware and Connecticut in particular,) that the 
whole people did not perish for want." 



152 



COMMERCIAL OBLiGATlONb 



PART I. Besides provisions, supplies of other kinds, which might l^ 
^'^'""''^^^ also said to have been indispensable, and unattainable from au^ 
other quarter, were carried to he West Indies by tlie Norlfi 
American colonies. We are told by the English writers, that 
not less than one hundred thousand casks and puncheons were, 
in a year, made in Jamaica, from American staves and head- 
ing; that the different towns and the buildings in most of the 
settlements upon the sea coast of that island, were constructed 
with timber imported from America, and that the same use 
of those articles, — many of them in a greater proportion, — 
prevailed in the other sugar islands. Bryan Edvvards* esti- 
mated the whole value of the American commodities im- 
ported into them annually, at seven hundred and fifty thousand 
pounds sterling. The Americans received West India pro- 
duce in barter, to the amount of about two-thirds, and the 
excess of one-third found its way to England for the purchase 
or pa/ment of goods. Sugar to a great amount, and a vast 
quantity of rum, saleable at no other than the American mar- 
kef, were among the chief articles taken in return. Some 
short extracts from the testimony which the West India mer- 
chants gave at the bar of the House of Commons in 1775, 
will exhibit this intercourse with more minuteness, and au- 
thority. 

" Norfh America is truly the granarv of the West Indies: 
from thence they draw the great quantities of flour and bis- 
cuit, for the use of one class of people, and of Indian corn, 
for the support of all the others; for the support not of man 
only, but of every animal; for the use of man, horses, swine, 
sheep, poultry. North America also furnishes the Wjst In- 
dies with rice. Rice, a more expensive diet, and less capa- 
ble of sustaining the body under hard labour, is of a more 
limited consumption, but it is a necessary indulgence for the 
young, the sick,^ the weakly, amongst the common people, and 
the negroes. North America not only furnishes the West 
Indies with bread, but with meat, with sheep, poultry, and 
some live cattle; but the demand for these is infinitely short of 
the demand for the salted beef, pork and fish. Salted fish 
(if the expression may be permitted in contrast with bread,) 
is the meat of all the lower ranks of people in Barbadoes, and 
the Leeward Islands. It is the meat of all the slaves in the 
West Indies. Nor is it disdained by persons of better condi- 
tion. The North American navigation also furnishes the 



Thoughts on the connexion between America and the West Indies. 



OF GREAT BRITAIN. 153 

sugar colonies with salt from Turk's Island, Sal Tortuga, and SECT. v. 
Anguilla, although these islands are themselves a part of the v-^-v^^*^ 
West Indies. The testimony which some experience has en- 
abled me to bear, you will find confirmed by official accounts." 

" For almost every purpose of the carpenter and the cooper, 
it is the lumber of North America that is used. The part 
which is furnished by the middle colonies of North America, 
is out of all proportion to the others. Without lumber to re- 
pair the buildings they run immediately to decay. And with- 
out lumber for the proper packages for sugar, and to contain 
rum, they cannot be sold at market; they cannot even be kept 
at home." 

" As to rum, the dependence of all the islands, except 
Jamaica, is as great upon the middle colonies of North Ame- 
rica, for the consumption of their rum, as it is for subsistence 
and for lumber. The rum of Barbadoes, the Leeward Islands, 
and the government of Granada, does not come into England, 
except in small portions. It goes in part to Ireland; and all 
the rest, the great quantity, is distributed chiefly among the 
middle colonies of North America, agreeable to the law of 
reciprocal exchange." 

4. The mother country was benefitted in her eastern empire, 
by the great consumption of tea in North America. Our ad- 
vocates in England, during the disputes which immediately 
preceded the rupture, a Hedged that her usual annual demand 
had amounted to ^600,000 sterling, besides great sums for 
piece-goods and china ware. It is suggested in Macpherson's 
Annals of Commerce,* that there was probably, some exag- 
geration in this statement; but admitting the amount to have 
been less, it must still have formed an important contribution 
to the funds of the East India Company. 

Of the vast quantities of lumber imported by Great Bri- 
tain and Ireland, no inconsiderable part was drawn from the 
middle colonies of North America. The trade arising out 
of the cod fishery, furnished near one half of the remittances 
from the New England provinces to the mother country. 
The produce of their cod fishery was divided into two- 
fifths of salted fish for the European market, and three- 
fifths for the West India market, and the amount of sales in 
the European continental markets, went to Great Britain 
in payment of goods purchased there. The spermaceti, 
whale oil, and whale bone, proceeding from the whale fishery, 

* Vol. iii. p. 545. 

Vol. T,— U 



154 



COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 



PARTI, as ^vell as the greater part of the cod oil, were sent to Great 
^■^^^'^-'^•^ Britain, and ministered esseuiially lo her manufactures. Ac- 
cording to the statements made iii 1775, by the merchants en- 
gaged in the Ameriean trade, to the House of Commons, the 
tishery generally, and carrying the fish to market from New 
Enghind, employed at that period about fourteen hundred and 
fifty vessels, of one hundred thousand tons burthen, and eleven 
thousand fishermen and seamen. 

The growth and ex'.ent of the American fisheries are thus 
exhibited by Seybert in his Statistics. " In 1670, the cod 
fishery was commenced by the people in New England; such 
was their application, that in 1675, ihey had in this employ- 
ment six hundred and sixty-five vessels, which measured 
25,650 tens, and navigated by 4,405 seamen; at that early 
period, they caught at the rate'of from 350,000 to 400,000 
quintals of fish per annum. In'1715, our fishermen first pur- 
su<:d the whale. The fish then known as the Greenland 
whale, frequented our northern coasts; in a very short lime, 
the activity and success of the colonists in taking them, forced 
them into more southern latitudes, where the intruders were 
followed by the harpoons of their former enemies; they were 
chased off the x\zores, along the coast of Africa and Brazil, 
to the remote regions of Falkland's Island. The discovery 
of a new species of whale was the consequence of this ex- 
tensive and perilous circumnavigation; the new fish was found 
to be more valuable than that on our northern coasts; to it 
they gave the name of the spermaceti whale." 

'■'• In 1771, the Americans employed one hundred and eighty- 
three vessels, measuring 13,820 tons, in the northern; and 
one hundred and twenty-one vessels, measuring 14,020 tons, 
in the southern whale fishery; these vessels gave employnlent 
to 4,059 seamen. From 1771 to 1775, Massachusetts em- 
ployed annually one hundred and eighty-three vessels, of 
13,120 tons, in the northern whale fishery, and one hundred 
and twenty-one vessels, of 14,026 tons, in the southern; na- 
■ vigatedby 4.059 seamen." 

" Before the revolutionary war, the small island of Nan- 
tucket had sixty-five ships, of 4,875 tons, annually employed 
in the northern ; and eigthty-five ships, of 10,200 tons, in 
the southern fishery."* 

* Feb. 9, 1778, ou the examination of witnesses at the bar of Par- 
liament, respecting- the commercial losses by the war with America — 
'' Mr Georg-e Davis averred that he had been 26 years concerned in tht- 
whale and cod fishery ; in respect to the former, he tried to take -whales 
with men from England, but though they could strike them, and har. 
ptruck several of late, he had not as yet taken one," &c 



OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



155 



The fact is not alif.le significative, that for the tncoiuage- sect v. 
meiit of the British fishtries separately, oil and whale fins, taken v,-»-v-i*^ 
in ships belonging to Great Britain, were allowed to be im- 
ported in her vessels, duty free ; while a duty wos im- 
posed on the importation of the same articles, taken or im- 
ported in vessels belonging to the plantations. Few of my 
readers can be strangers to the splendid panegyric of Burke 
upon the unparalleled induslry and hardihood displaced by 
New England in the pursuit of the whale. It may not be un- 
seasonable to recall the. rebuke addressed to the .British Par- 
liament, with which he prefaced it, as well as the merit which 
he commemorated. "• As to the wealth which the colonies 
have drawn from the sea j)y their fisheries, you had all that 
matter fully opened at your bar. You surely thought those 
acquisitions of value, since they seemed even to excite }our 
envy; and yet the spirit by which ihat enterprising employ- 
ment has been exercised, ought rather, in niy opinion, to have 
raised your admiration. What in the world is equal to 
it." ^c. 

5. So considerable a trade as that between the colonies 
and the rest of the British empire produced a correspondent 
increase of shipping. The one hundred thousand hogsheads 
of tobacco, and the sixty thousand barrels of rice,* annu- 
ally imported into Great Britain, — employed in the trans- 
portation, seventy thousand tons of shipping, almost wholly 
belonging to Great Britain. Altogether, one thousand and 
seventy-eight ships, and twenty-eight thousand nine hun- 
dred and ten seamen, were engaged in the American trade. 
The building of ships for sale formed a material branch of 
the induslry of the northern and middle colonies, and was 
brought to -great perfection, particularly at Philadelphia. 
They supplied the mother country with considerable numbers, 
at prices much inferior to the standard rale of her cheapest 
ports. She found an important advantage in this supply, in 
as much as it was necessary to the support of her carrying 



* By tlie act of 3 Geo. II. c. 28. all rice was, for the second time, 
declared to be among' the enumerated commodities, which were to pay 
ata.x on bein^ transported from colony to colony, and who could not be 
earned directly to any foreign market. This act established, iiowever, 
an exception to the general ride ; and allowed that " any of his majesty's 
subjects, in any ship or vessel biiUtin Great Brittnn, or belonging to any 
of his majesty's swh^ecis residing in Great Britain, navigated according 
to law, and having cleared outward in any port of Great Britain for the 
province of Carolina, may ship rice in the same province, and carry 
the same directly to any part of Europe, to the southward of Cape 
Finisterre ■" 



156 COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 

PART L trade, ivhicli, to use the language of her writers, " attained 
"-^^'■'^ to an amazing height by the aid of her colonies." She was 
unable to provide enough of ships of her own construction to 
answer her purposes; and this is attested by the fact, that in the 
course of the revolutionary war, when America ceased to be 
the provider, the foreign shipping employed in her commerce, 
which before had borne the proportion of twelve to forty, rose 
to thai of twenty-nine to thirty-five. Of the shipping em- 
ployed in the commerce of Great Britain, 398,000 tons were 
of the built of America. According to Dr. Sey bert's Statistics, 
the proportion of the tonnage employed in the commerce of 
the colonies and Great Britain, owned by the inhabitants of 
Great Britain, amounted to about three and two-third eighths; 
the proportion which belonged to British merchants, occasion- 
ally resident in those colonies, was about two-eighths, making 
together nearly six-eighths of the whole, and the proportion 
of the tonnage so employed, which belonged to merchants, 
who were natives and permanent inhabitants of those colo- 
nies, was rather more than two and one-third eighths of the 
whole. 

Of the tonnage employed in the trade of the colonies with 
i\ British West Indies, five-eighths belonged to merchants, 
who were permanent inhabitants of those colonies, and three- 
eighths to British merchants, who resided occasionally in the 
colonies. 

None of the colonies to the north of Maryland ever had 
a balance in their favour in the trade with the mother 
country; but always, on the contrary, a large balance against 
them. The exports of all the colonies, for the year 1770, 
amounted at least to three millions sterling;* the whole of 
which may be said to have turned to her account. What she 
did not consume herself of their productions, she received as 
the entrepot for Europe, to the great inconvenience and loss 
of the American owner; and the proceeds of that proportion 
of them — one-sixth only — which went directly from America 
to continental Europe, were invested in her manufactures. I 
do not think it necessary to mark the particular utility of the 
several articles which she consumed, and will content myself 
on this head, with repeating after Mr. Burke, " If I were to 
derail the imports of England from North America, I could 

* " An estimate was made this year," (1769) says Macphersson, (An- 
nals, vol. ill. p. 493,) "of the trade of tlie North American Provinces, 
including Hudson's Bay and Newfoundland ; and the exports from 
Great Britain, are made to amount to 3,370,900/. aiid the exports from 
the colonies to 3,924, 626/." &c 



OF GRKAT BRITAIN. 



157 



show how many enjoynienls they procured, which deceive the SECT. V. 
burden of iife; how many materials which invigorated the ^w^--^-^-' 
springs of national industry, and extended and animated every 
part of British foreign and domestic commerce." With respect 
to the trade with the Indians in America, that was wholly on 
account of Great Britain. Dr. Franklin stated, in his exami- 
nation before the House of Commons, what could not be de- 
nied, — that this trade '' though carried on in America was not 
an American interest; that the people of America were chiefly 
farmers and planters, and scarce any thing which they raised or 
produced was an article of commerce with the Indians; that 
the Indian trade was a British interest: was carried on with 
British manufactures for the profit of British merchants and 
manufacturers." 

Connected with this head of the trade between the colonies 
and the mother country, there is one accusation often repeated 
against the formep, on which I would say a few words: I allude 
to their pretended backwardness in pa\in§ their debts to the 
British merchants. This accusation was abundantly refuted 
by the British merchants and manufacturers themselves; who 
bore emphatic testimony at the bar of the House of Commons, 
in 1775, of the fair dealing and good faith of their American 
customers. It is, moreover, rendered highly improbable, by 
the fact, that, although six millions sterling were owing (he 
latter, in December, 1774, yet, in December, 1775, two mil- 
lions only remained to be paid; four millions having been re- 
mitted, even when a separation seemed inevitable.* It is 
true, that at an earlier period, some few British traders had 
complained of the laws in force in the plantations, for the re- 
covery of debts, and that parliament had, in consequence, 
passed a tyrannical bill,t which altered the nature of evidence 
in their courts of common law, and the nature of their estates, 
by treating real estates as chattels. To facilitate the proof 
and recovery of debts, it enacted, that an affidavit taken be- 
fore the mayor, or other chief magistrate of any town in Eng- 
land, and properly authenticated, should be received as legal 
evidence in all the courts of the plantations, and have the 
same force and effect as the personal oath of the plaintiff" 
made there in open court; and that lands, houses, negroes, and 
all real estate whatsoever, should be liable to, and chargea- 
ble with all debts due either to the king, or any of his sub- 
jects, and be assets for the satisfaction thereof, &c. 



Champion, p. 269. f 5 Geo. 11. c. 7. 



158 COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 

PART I. 6. On this subject of (he tr?tlc of America with the mother 
"^-^"v-^i^ country, it would have been ahuost enotigli to have cited the 
testimony borne by Mr. Burke and Lord Chatham. The fol- 
lowing passage of the speech of the former, on the Concilia- 
tion with America, arose immediately out of his consi- 
deration of the custom house- returns, and of the evidence of 
notorious facts. " The trade wi\h America alone is how within 
less than ^:500,000 of being equal to what this great com- 
mercial nation, England, carried on at the beginning of this 
century with ihe whole world! If I iiad taken the largest \ear 
of those on your table, it would rather have exceeded. But, 
it will be said, is not this American trade an unnatural pro- 
tuberance, that has drawn the juices from the rest of the body.^ 
The reverse. It is the very food that has nourished every other 
pari into iLs present magnitude. Our general trade has been 
greatly augmented; and augmented more or less, in almost ev< ry 
part to which it ever extended, but wiih this material difif rence; 
that of the six millions which in the beginning of the century, 
constituted the whole mass of our export commerce, the co- 
lony trade was but one-twelfth part; it is now (as a part of 
sixteen millions) consideral»ly more than a third of the whole." 
There is something still more direct and conclusive in the 
language of Chatham. He spoke with all the authority which 
ofticial station could possibly give in any matter. '•' When I 
had the honour of serving his majesty, 1 availed niyseif," said 
this illustrious statesman, in one of his speeches agiiinst Gran- 
ville's scheme of tbxa;i('n, '■'■ of ilie nieans rS ir.torn-ici'ion, 
which I derived from my office; I speak -hereforc from kiiow- 
ledge. My niaiiiiais wer^ go:'. I w:«s a' pdins 'o rniiect, 
to digest, to consider them; and I vvii! be br>ld to .icHrrn, tijat 
the profit to Great Britain, from the iratle ofth'. roionies, 
through all its branches, is tvo millions a year. This is ?he 
fund that carried you triumphantly through the last war. 1 he 
estates that were rented at two liiotisand pounds a year, three- 
score years ago, are three thousand pounds at present. Tiiose 
estates sold then from fifteen to eighteen years purchase: ihoy 
same may now be sold for thirty. You owe tliis to Jimerica. 
This is the price ^fimerica pays you for her protection.'''' 

The quotations which I have made from Adam Smith, in 
the first section, develop the nature of the commercial re- 
straint under which the colonies existed. It was, in the 
theory, a coHdition of rigorous servitude. They could 
import no commodity, — with the exception of a few articles, — 
of the growth or manuficture of E:iiope, bu* through Great 
Britain; they were allowed a direct foreign trade, only so far 



OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



159 



as was required by her interests. " The policy of Great Bri- SECT V. 
tain," said Mr. Burke, addressing the House of Commons, ^-o-''**-' 
" was, from the beginning, the system of a monopoly- No 
trade was let loose from that constraint, but merely to enable 
the colonists !o dispose of what, in the course of your trade, 
you could not take; or to enable them to dispose of such arti- 
cles as we forced upon them, and, for which, without some 
degree of liberty, they could not pay. Hence all your specific 
and detailed enumerations; hence the innumerable checks and 
counterchecks; hence that infinite variety of paper chains by 
which you bind together this complicated system of the cdo- 
nies. This principle of commercial monopoly niiis ii)riMigh 
no less than twenty- nine acts of parliament, from the year 
1660 to the unfortunate period of 1764."* 

The celebrated navigation act of 12 Car. II. not only pre- 
scribed in what vi-ssds, and to wh:it places, the gcods of the 
colonies misiht be exported, hut it limited one of their internal 
righis; it prescribed wliat persons might act as mere hanis or 
factors, in the coloiiies. Three years afterwards, the P'ii iia- 
ment passed another bill, "^ to maintain," as they expr; ssed 
themselves, " a gr* ater correspondence and kindness beuvi <'n 
the colonies and England; to keep them in a firmer depend- 
ence on it; to make the kingdom a staple, not only of the 
commodities of the plantations, but also of die commodiiies 
of other countries for supplying ihem." This act (15 Car. 
ii. c 7.) directed accordingly, that no European goods slimdd 
be inijiorted into the plantations, but such ass'^.ould be shipped 
in England, and proceed directly on board Eiig'i-ih or piasita- 
tion ships, &r. The penalty was forf iture of the goods and 
vessel; one-third to the king, one to the governor of the plan- 
tation, if the seizure were made there, and one third to the in- 
former. And to facilitate the recovery of the penalties, the 
informer had his option of suing either in the king's courts, 
where the offence was committed, or in any court of record in 
England. 

Many of the articles which the colonies were compelled to 
buy of the mother country, could have been procured at a 
much cheaper rale elsewhere. She could charge her manu- 
factures with what imposts she pleased, and the burden fell 
ultimately rpnn the American consumer. It was stated to her 
ministers, by the agents of the colonies, that from the cxM-a- 
ordinary demand in America, for her fabrics, she reaped an 
advantage of at least twenty per cent, in the price, beyond 



Speech on American taxation 



160 COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 

PARTI, what the articles could be purchased for at foielgn markets. 
'^-^^^-"^^ The forced accumulation of American produce in her ports, 
reduced its price, by which she gained, on what she consumed, 
exactly in proportion to the loss of the colonists. The profit 
accruing to her from the portion re-exported, was obviously 
considerable. Taking off, as the colonies did in the latter 
years of their dependence, two millions annually of her manu- 
factures, and depositing with her, compulsorily, produce nearly 
to the same amount, it must be sufficiently clear, when the 
other circumstances just stated, are kept in view, that they 
paid an enormous indirect tax, independently of the charges 
to which they were liable, as a consequence of her Eu- 
ropean quarrels. Happily their domestic governments, cast 
in (he simplest mould, and unincumbered with pageantry or 
surplusage of any kind, subjected them to no heavy expense, 
" All the different civil establishments in North America," 
said Adam Smith, " exclusive of those of Maryland and North 
Carolina, did not, before their revolt, cost the inhabitants 
above ^64,700 a year; an ever memorable example at how 
small an expense three millions of people may not only be 
governed, but well governed."* 

What has been said conveys an adequate idea of the situa- 
tion in which the North American colonies were placed as to 
trade, but I wish to offer something more in illustration of the 
precipitation and levity, with which their interests, and the 
true interests of the mother country at the same time, were 
sacrificed, under the influence of an undistinguishing selfish- 
ness, I may quote as of perfect accuracy, — since no British 
writer ventured to contradict them, — the following statements 
which Franklin published in London, in 1768. 

"They (the colonies,) reflected how lightly the interest of 
all America had been estimated here, when the interests of a 
few of the inhabitants of Great Britain happened to have the 
smallest competition with it. That the whole American 
people was forbidden the advantage of a direct importation of 
wine, oil, and fruit, from Portugal; but must take them loaded 
with all the expense of a voyage, one thousand leagues round 
about, being to be landed first in England, to be re-shipped 
for America; expenses, amounting in war time at least to 
thirty pounds per cent, more than otherwise they would have 



* W. of N. c. vii. b. iv. It bespeaks an extraordinary share of politi- 
cal virtue in the colonists, to have resisted, as they did. during so long 
and close a connexion, the example of themotlii r countryjOn the score 
of public expenditure and aristocratical distinctions. 



OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



161 



been charged with; and all this merely, that a few Portugal SECT. V. 
merchants in London may gain a commission on those goods v_^-v^^ 
passing through their hands. 

" On a slight complaint of a few merchants trading with 
Virginia, nine colonies were restrained from making paper 
money, become absolutely necessary to their internal com- 
merce, from the constant remittance of their gold and silver 
to Britain. But not only the interest of a particular body of 
merchants, but the interest of any small body of British trades- 
men or artificers, has been found to outweigh that of all the 
king's subjects in the colonies. 

" Iron is to be found every where in America, and beaver 
are the natural produce of that country: hats and nails and 
steel are wanted there as well as here. It is of no importance 
to the common welfare of the empire, whether a subject of the 
king gets his living by making hats on this or on that side of 
the water. Yet the hatters of England have prevailed to ob- 
tain an act in their own favour, res. raining that manufacture in 
America, in order to oblige the Americans to send their beaver 
to England to be manufactured; and purchase back the hats, 
loaded with the charges of a double transportation. In (he 
same manner have a few nail-makers, and still a smaller 
body of steel-makers, (perhaps there are not half a dozen of 
these in England,) prevailed totally to forbid, by an act of par- 
liament, the erecting of slitting mills, or steel furnaces in 
America; that the Americans may be obliged to take all their 
nails for their buildings, and steel for their tools, from these 
artificers, under the same disadvantages," &c. 

7. I may be permitted, before I leave this topic of com- 
mercial obligation, to advance to a more recent period. If a 
British statesman could not, after the American war, say ab- 
solutely, as Chatham had done before its occurrence — "• Ame- 
rica is the fountain of our wealth, the nerve of our strength, 
the basis of our power," he might, however, safely ascribe no 
inconsiderable share of the continued prosperity of the British 
isles, to the commercial intercourse which was re-established 
with her, and to her increase in wealth and population. Her 
vast consumption of British manufactures, her abundant pro- 
duction of the raw materials, cotton particularly,* her imports 

* In 1791, the first parcel of cotton of American growth, was export- 
ed from the United States. Calculated on the average of the six years, 
from 1806 to 1811, there was annually imported into Great Britain, from 
the United States, 34,568,487 pounds, and in 1811, 46,872,452 pounds. 

Vol. I.— X. 



162 



COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 



PART 1. from the East Indies, her traffic with the West, the diffusion, 
'•^'^^"^^^ through her moans, of the British commodities of every de- 
scription over the continent of Europe, gave her, in her inde- 
pendent slate, an aspect nearly approaching to that under 
which Chatham saw her in the colonial. A distinguished 
member of the British parliament, Mr, Alexander Baring, ex- 
amined fully in 1808, with the advantages of practical know- 
ledge and much general commercial learning, the question of 
her increased utility, and pronounced that, upon the whole, 
she had, in her independent situation, to a greater degree than 
could have been expected from any other, been the means of 
augmenting the British resources^ in the war loith the conti- 
nental powers — that she contributed in the highest degree pos- 
sible, all the benefits which one nation could derive from the ex- 
istence of another, or that one mother country could receive 
from that of the best regulated colony.* The same enquirer 
ascertained, that ihree-fourths of the money proceeding from 
the consumption of the produce of the soil of America, in all 
parts of the world, were paid to Great Britain for her manu- 
factures. He developed other benefits, the reality of which 
did not admit of dispute, and found it unpardonable " that 
his countrymen should entertain a jealousy of the prosperity 
and wealih American independence had produced, which not 
only served to circulate the produce of their industry, where 
they could not carry it themselves, but by increasing the means 
of America, augmented in the same proportion her consump- 
tion oi" that produce, at a time when the loss of their former 
customers, by the persecutions of France, rendered it most 
valuable." 

It will be enough, for the present, in addition to these re- 
marks, to state the leading facts in the history of our indepen- 
dent trade with the British empire, as they are exhibited in 
the valuable works of Pitkin and Seybert. 

The amount of goods imported into the United States from 
England in the year 1784, must have been about eighteen 
millions of dollars, and in 1785, about twelve millions; mak- 
ing, in those two years, thirty millions of dollars; while the 



In 1755, the cotton manufacture, in England, was ranked " among the 
humblest of the domestic arts ;" the products of this branch were then 
almost entirely for home consumption ; in 1797, it took the lead of all 
the other manufactures in Great Britain, and in 1809, gave employment 
to 80'J,000 persons, and its annual value was estimated at 30,000,000/, 
or 132,000,000 of dollars.— Seybert. 

* Examination of the Orders in Council, &c. 



OP GREAT BRITAIN. 163 

exports of the United States to England, were only between sect. v. 
eight and nine millions. Vi^->oiii^ 

On the average of the six years, posterior to the war of our 
revolution, ending wilh 1789, the merchandise annually im- 
ported into Great Britain, from the United States, amounted 
to 908,636i. sterling; and the importations into the United 
States, from Great Britain, on the same average, amounted 
annuallv to 2,ll9,837i!. sterling; leaving an annual balance 
of l,2ri,201/. sterling, or 5,329,284 dollars, in favour of 
Great Britain. In 1792, according to the estimate of the 
American Secretary of the Treasury, our exports to Great 
Britain and her dominions amounted to 9,363,416 dollars, and 
our imports to 15,285,428 dollars. Much the greater part of 
the imports was from Great Britain, exclusive of her depen- 
dencies. 

From sundry British documents it appears, that the United 
States, from 1793 to 1800, imported from Great Britain a 
greater amount of manufactures than were exported from 
Great Britain during the same period to all foreign Europe. 
In 1800, the United States received from Great Britain more 
than one-fourth of the amount of the manufactured articles 
exported by her to all parts of the world. 

During the seven years from 1795 to 1801, both inclusive, 
the balance of trade with Great Britain and Ireland, and the 
dominions thereof, was uniformly against the United Stales, 
and in the aggregate amounted to 106,118,104 dollars, or 
15,159,748/. per annum. The balance in favour of Great 
Britain was only 70,116 dollars less than the apparent unfa- 
vourable balance produced by our trade with all parts of the 
world collectively taken. 

In 1800, the merchandise exported from Great Britain was 
worth 16/. 14s. sterling, or 74.23 dollars per ton; and that 
imported from Great Britain into the United States was worth 
54/. 4s. sterling, or 240.89 dollars per ton. 

In 1802, 1803, and 1804, there was annually imported into 
the United States, from the British possessions in Europe, of 
merchandise paying duties ad valorem, and of other manufac- 
tured articles subject to specific duties, the aggregate of 
27,400,000 dollars: if we admit that one-fourth of this 
amount was re-exported, 20,550,000 dollars of the value 
thereof remained for the annual consumption of our popula- 
tion; the profits on which were gained by Great Britain. It 
is generally calculated that raw materials gain seven fold by 
beins; manufactured. Such were our contributions in those 



164 COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 

PART I. years, for the advancement of the skill and industry of the 

^^/-"^^ British nation. 

On the average of the three years, 1802, 1803, and 1804, 
the annual value of the merchandise exported from the Uni- 
ted States to the dominions of Great Britain, amounted to 
18,665,777 dollars; and on the average of the same three 
years, the annual value of the merchandise imported into the 
United States from Great Britain amounted to 35,737,030 
dollars; leaving an annual balance of 17,071,253 dollars 
against the United States. 

The real value of British produce and manufacture export- 
ed to the United States, on an average of the vears 1806 and 
1807, was 11,417,834/. sterling, or about 50,500,000 dollars; 
making one quarter and one-third of all the exports of British 
produce and manufacture during those two years. By the Eng- 
lish accounts, the real value of cotton and woollen goods ex- 
ported to the United Slates from England, on an average of 
the same two years, was 8,984,886/. or about 39,500,000 
dollars, as valued in England. 

In 1807, the amount of goods, paying duties ad valorem, 
was nearly 39,000,000 of dollars; when we add the goods 
imported, in the same year, duty free, an.d those subject to 
specific duties, the whole amount imported from Great Britain 
in 1807, would not, it is believed, fall much short of 
50,000,000 of dollars. 

The aggregate value of the exports of every description to 
the United Slates from Great Britain, during the seven years, 
from 1805 to 1811, amounted to 62,266,668/. sterling, or 
annually to 36,470,471 dollars; their aggregate value to all 
parts of the world during the seven years amounted to 
376,977,160/. sterling, or annually to 220,800,498 dollars; 
or, the United States received annually, of the merchandise 
of every description, exported to all parts of the world from 
Great Britain, 16.51 per centum, or one-sixth of the aggre- 
gate value thereof 

On the average of the seven years, from 1805 to 1811, the 
aggregate value of the British produce and manufactures an- 
nually exported from Great Britain to the United States, 
amounted to 35,441,367 dollars; and the annual value of the 
domestic produce of the United Slates exported to Great 
Britain, calculated on the same average, amounted to 
9,124,941 dollars; leaving an annual balance of 26,316,426 
dollars in favour of Great Britain. Or the annual value of 
the exports of every description from Great Britain to the Uni- 
ted States, on the average aforesaid, amounted to 36,470,471 



OF GREAT BRITAIN. 165 

dollars; and the aggregate annual value of the exports of every SECT. V. 
description from the United Stales to Great Britain and her s^^^^^Vn/ 
dependencies, her East India possessions excepted, amounted 
to 16,438,362dollars;leavinganannual balance of 20,032,109 
dollars in favour of Great Britain. 

On the return of peace between the two countries, in 1815, 
the importation of British goods was great beyond example. 
From the 1st of January to the 31st of December, 1815, th^ 
amount of goods paying duties ad valorem, imported from 
Great Britain and her dominions, was 71,400,599 dollars. 
Nearly the whole of this sum was made up from goods coming 
directly from Great Britain, consisting principally of woollens 
and cotton. The value of articles paying specific duties, from 
Great Britain and her dependencies, during the same period, 
(calculating their value at the place of importation) was 
1 J,470,.'?86.80 dollars, making the whole amount no less 
than 82,871,185.80 dollars from Great Britain and the coun- 
tries in her possession. 

During the six years from 1802-3 to 1807-8 inclusive, the 
United States exported in bullion to India, only 1,742,682/. 
sterling, less than had been exported during the same term, by 
the British East India Company, the officers of the Company's 
ships, and by the British private trade: the amount which we 
exported, was more than two-thirds of that exported from 
Great Britain. 

It appears that the United States, during the six years from 
1802 to 1808, exported to the British East Indies, in mer- 
chandise, an aggregate of 2,589,589 dollars; or annually, 
431,598 dollars. The treasure (specie) exported in the 
same term, in the aggregate, amounted to 17,626,275 dollars, 
or 2,937,712 dollars per annum. The importations into those 
settlements, consisting of money and merchandise, from the 
United States, amounted to 3,369,310 dollars per annum. 
During the six years aforesaid, there was exported, Irom the 
British East Indies, to the United States, merchandise, 
amounting to 18.633,426 dollars, or annually to 3,105,571 
dollars. The treasure exported as aforesaid, amounted in the 
aggregate to 69,500 dollars, or annually to 1 1,583 dollars; 
leaving an annual balance in favour of India, of 2,662,390 
dollars. 

- During the years 1804, 1805, and 1806, the United States 
supplied the British West India Islands with more than nine 
tenths of their flour, meal and bread, about two-thirds of their 
Indian corn, oats, peas and beans, about one-half of their beef 



166 COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 

PART T. and porl^, more than one-half of their dried fish, and nearlj 
^•^"^•'■'^"^ the whole of their live stock and lumber. 

The average quantity of slaves and heading, sent to the 
British West Indies, in the years 1805, 1806, 1807, was 
17,614,000, being nearly one-half of the quantity exported 
during these years. The quantity of boards and plank, for 
the same years, on an average was 40,000,000. In 1803, 
^60,555, and in 1807, 251,706 barrels of flour were export- 
ed to these islands. 

The value of flour, bread, and biscuit exported to the Bri- 
tish West Indies, on an average of the years 1802, 1803, 
1804, was about 2,000,000 dollars; of lumber of all kinds 
about 1,000,000; of beef, pork, bacon, and lard, about 
800,000 dollars; and of Indian corn, rye, and Indian meal, 
about 600,000. The quantity of rum imported, during the 
same period, was about 4,000,000 gallons annually, and was 
valued at about 2,500,000 dollars. The quantity imported, 
in the years 1805, 1806, and 1807, was about 4,614,000 
gallons annually. 

The average amount of duties upon merchandise, annually 
imported into the United States from the British West India 
islands and North American colonial possessions, from 1802 
to 1816, excluding the period from the commencement of the 
restrictive system to the termination of the late war, exceeds 
2,000,000 dollars. The value of the merchandise upon which 
these duties accrued is supposed to be equal to 7,000,000 
dollars per annum. The average annual amount of exports 
to the same places, principally of domestic production, up to 
1817, excluding the time of the operation of the restrictive 
system, and the continuance of the war, have exceeded 
6,500,000 dollars. In 1815, the amount of the duties on 
merchandise imported in American vessels from the British 
West India Islands and North American colonial possessions, 
was, to the amount of duties imported in British vessels, as one 
to four; in 1816, as one to five and a half, or two to eleven. 
Taking the ratio of 1816, as the basis of calculation, and it is 
believed to aflbrd the safest and most solid, — as past experi- 
ence shows a constant diminution of the amount of duties on 
goods imported in vessels of the United States — it is estimat- 
ed, supposing the same proportion exists in the exports, that 
American vessels are used on the transportation annually of 
2,177,924 dollars worth of merchandise, and British vessels, 
of 11, 322,0*3 6 dollars worth of the most bulky articles of 
commerce, one-half of which are of the growth, production, or 



OP GREAT BRITAIN. 167 

manufacture of the United States. This inequality in the ad- SECT. v. 
vantages of this commerce, to the navigating interest of this ^-^-v-^^-- 
country, arises from the rigorous enforcement of the colonial 
system of Great Britain, as to the United States, while it is 
relaxed to all nations who are friendly to the British empire 
and her colonial possessions. 



]6$ 



SECTION VI. 



OF THE RELATIVE DISPOSITIONS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND 
AMERICA, FROM THE PEACE OF 1763. 

PART I. !• The oppression and losses which the colonies had en- 
v^F-v-^h-' dured ; the shackles imposed upon them ; the destitution to 
which they had been so long consigned ; the parsimony and 
unskilfulness with which aid was finally administered by the 
mother country ; the faint praise or the bitter sarcasm which 
attended their noblest exertions ; the despicable character and 
habitual malversation of their governors ;* the immeasurable 
evils which they could trace to the indifference, incapacity, or 
corruption of British ministers ; the general complexion of 
the domestic government of Great Britain, so livid in the 
contrast with their own, and so ghastly in the pictures of her 
party writers ; all, were insufficient to stifle their affections, 
or shake their allegiance. In the season of their severest dis- 
tress from the incursions of the Indian and Canadian ; at the 
height of their dissatisfaction with the restraining and dis- 
franchising system of the mother country; they did not turn 
their eyes to France, who could have arrested the steps of 
their savage invaders, and who would gladly have made any 
compromise, or concession of privileges, to attach them to her 
empire. Franklin boasted with truth in 1768, " Scotland 
has had its rebellion; Ireland has had its rebellion; England 
its plots against the reigning family; but America is free from 
this reproach." What is related of the Greek colonies, could 
be more emphatically said of those of Great Britain — that 
they remembered the land of their fathers with filial respect 
and affection; that they retained an invincible predilection 
for its laws and customs, for its religion and language; that 
they followed devotedly its fortunes, and exulted in its glory. 
The peace of 1763 seemed to banish every chilling recollec- 
tion; to heighten their complacency in the connexion with 

* See Note K, 



DISPOSITIONS FROM THE, &C. 169 

Great Britain and their admiration of the English constitution. SE-^T. vi. 
They fondly thought the true and highest panegyric and tri- v-^-v-^*^ 
umph of the American, to be comprised in the verses of the 
Poet, 

And English merit his, where meet combiii'd 
Whate'er high fancy, sound judicious thought, 
An ample generous heart, undrooping soul, 
And firm, tenacious valour can bestow.* 

Testimony of a convincing nature superabounds with re- 
spect to these dispositions. Out of the mass, I will select 
that of the two men who, by their opportunities of know- 
ledge, and soundness of judgment, were entitled, perhaps, to 
most weight in the queslion; Governor Pownall and Dr. Frank- 
lin. The first had been long in some of the highest offices 
which the crown could confer in Ap)erica — governor and 
commander-in-chief of Massachusetts Bay — governor of 
South Carolina — lieutenant-governor of New Jeisey, &c.:the 
second gave the evidence which 1 shall quote from him, in 
1785, when he could have no interest in making a false or 
exaggerated statement. 

"■ 1 profess," said Pownall in 1765, "an affection for 
the colonies, because having lived amongst their people in 
a private, as well as in a public character, I know them — 
I know that in their private social relations, there is not a 
more friendly, and in their political one, a more zealously 
loyal people, in all his majesty's dominions. When fairly 
and openly dealt with, there is not a people who has a truer 
sense of the necessary powers of government. They would 
sacrifice their dearest interests for the honour and prosperity 
of their mother country. I have a right to say this, because 
experience has given me a practical knowledge, and this im- 
pression, of them. "t 

" The duty of a colony is, affection for the mother country: 
here I may affirm, that in whatever form and temper this af- 
fection can lie in the human breast, in that form, by the deep- 
est and most permanent impression, it ever did lie in the breast 
of the American people. They have no other idea of this 
country than as their home; they have no other word by which 
to express it, and till of late, it has constantly been expressed 
by the name of home. That powerful affection, the love of 
our native country, which operates in every breast, operates 

* Thompson. 

f The Administration of the Colonies — Dedication to Oeorge Gren- 
ville. 

Vol. I.— Y 



170 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

PART I. in this people towards England, which they consider as their 
-^"^^-^^"^ native coimiry: nor is this a mere passive impression, a mere 
opinion in speculation — it has been wrought up in them to a 
vigilant and active zeal for the service of this country.'"* 

" The true loyalists," said Franklin, " were the people of 
America against whom the royalists of England acted. No 
people were ever known more truly loyal, and universally so, 
to their sovereigns: the protestant succession in the House of 
Hanover was their idol. Not a jacobite was to be found from 
one end of the colonies to the other. They were atreclionate 
to the people of England, zealous and forward to assist in her 
wars, by voluntary contributions of men and money, even be- 
yond their proportion." 

In my first and second sections, 1 have quoted the language 
of several of the British politicians, imputing to the colonies, 
even in iheir infancy, the design of ac(|uii(ing independence. 
As it was my purpose there, merely to set the apprehensions of 
the mother country, and the energetic character of our Ameri- 
can forefathers, in a more striking relief, I did not formally deny 
the truth of the charge; and it appeared (o me that if it were 
admitted to be true, the circumstances under which the set- 
tlers repaired to this continent, and consolidated iheii' tbrtunes, 
would furnish them with an obvious and a complete justifica- 
tion. But it is far from being well-founded; and some obser- 
vations on the subject, in this place, may not be deemed su- 
perfluous. The excessive jealousy of power, and theconscious- 
ness of tyrannical rule, raised the suspicion in the administra- 
tion of the Stuarts and of the Roundheads; the selfish and do- 
mineering spirit of the nation at large rendered her susceptible, 
at every moment, of lively alarm for her monopoly and sove- 
reignty. Government and people were, from these causes, in 
the language of Mr. Burke, "too acute; perpetually full of 
distrusts, conjectures and divinations, formed in defiance of 
facts and experience." Whenever a natural or chartered 
right, a local privilege and immunity, was pleaded against 
the encroachments of their arrogant will or oppressive acts, 
they at once fancied and f)roclaimed, that their whole autho- 
rity was denied, and that the litigant provinces either medi- 
tated, or had committed rebellion. They could not perceive 
that the very assertion of a privilege implied an acknow- 
ledgment of their supremacy; that the eagerness of the co- 
lonists to obtain charters from the crown, and (heir anxiety 
to preserve unimpaired those which they obtained, — their 

* Debate on Disturbances in America, 1770. 



PEACE OP 1763. ni 

claims to the liberties of Engiishmen as defined and pledged SECT. VI. 
by the British constitution; iheir perpetual appeals to the v-^-^-*^^ 
authority of Parliament; amounted to a constant renovation of 
fealty, and indicated any other drift than that of separation. 
When, after the peace of 1763, the scheme of American tax- 
ation and servitude was matured, and the determination fixed 
to persist in it at all hazards, its immediate authors and abet- 
tors, in order to render it more acceptable to the nation, 
exerted themselves particularly, to spread the impression, that 
New England had constantly aimed at independence; that 
" the Americans had been obstinate, undutiful and ungovern- 
able from the very beginning." This was the text taken by 
the orators in Parliament, and the writers out of doors, on the 
ministerial side, with a view to the conclusion, that all con- 
cession or gentleness to the intractable provincials would be 
futile; that " they never could be brought to their duty and 
the true subordinate relation, till reduced to an unconditional, 
effectual submission."* 

To convict New England of treasonable dispositions in all 
stages of her existence, is, palpably, the main object of Chal- 
mers, in his Annals; and it would seem, that he, or those in 
whose service he writes, did not deem it advisable to relin- 
quish the argument, as late as the year 1814. In the preface 
to a work published under his name in that year, and entitled 
" Opinions of Eminent Lawyers, on various points of English 
Jurisprudence, chiefly concerning the Colonies, &c." I find 
the following passage: " None of the statesmen of 1766 or 
1768, nor those of the preceding nor subsequent times, had 
any suspicion that there lay among the documents, in the 
Board of Trade and Patent Office, the most satisfactory 
proofs from the epoch of the Revolution in 1668, throughout 
every reign, and during every administration, of the settled 
purpose of the revolted colonies, to acquire direct independence: 
the design had long been entertained of acquiring positive so- 
vereignty." 

We have seen what these proofs are, in the extracts which 
I have made from his Annals. They amount to no more than 
what was extant in the public history of the colonies; and 
may be resolved into a determined assertion, on their part, of 
fundamental liberties, and into acts of sheer necessity. In 
illustrating their political intrepidity, I have cited many in- 
stances of an inflexible tenacity as to natural and chartered 
rights, but none of a rebellious or seditious temper. Evidence 

'* Earl Talbot, House of Lords, 1776. 



173 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

PART I. is not vvantiug that they would never have submitted to the 
v«^-v-^ deprivation of their J^l•i\ ileges; but none exists even of a wish 
for independence, while those privileges could be preserved. 
If we fix our attention, for a moiuem, on the situation of the 
first settlers, particularly the northern, we shail perceive that, 
to exist at all in order and safety; to constitute a regular and 
stable commonwealth; it was indispensable for ihem to 
transcend the letter of the royal patents. They had no alter- 
native in the first instance, but to erect judicatories, and esta- 
blish representative assemblies, in reference to their domestic 
weal; and, when no hope of protection from abroad could be 
indulged, to confederate for external defence. 

We may wonder that Dr. Robertson, acknowledging the 
dereliction of the New England colonies during the civil com- 
motions in the mother country, and the extremity of their peril 
from the plots of the Indians, should yet censoriously re- 
present their league of 164c3, — the only means of their preser- 
vation, — as " a transaction in which they seem to have con- 
sidered themselves as independent societies, possessing all the 
rights of sovereignty, and free from the controul of any supe- 
rior power."* Thrown as they were into a wilderness, rather 
as reprobates to be sacrificed, than as subjects to be defended; 
committed to the exigencies and chances of a distant settle- 
ment, and pressed with the highest degree of danger at the 
season when all was confusion and dissension in the mother 
country; they must have fallen into anarchy themselves, had 
they waited to consult her rulers respecting their domestic 
arrangements; or have perished by the tomahawk of the savage, 
had they looked to her for a system of defence, and delayed to 
combine their strength and sagacity, so as to assure a common 
exertion, whenever it might be wanted, whether for military or 
civil objects. The institutions and prosperity that arose out of 
this compulsory exercise of discretion, under such untoward 
circumstances, excite in me anew, the surprise and admiration 
which I have more than once expressed. 

The measure of coining money, taken by Massachusetts, dur- 
ing the civil wars, gave a handle to her enemies in England, 
which was used eagerly, from the period of the Restoration, to 
the apparition militant of Chalmers and his numerous associates 
in the same crusade. That writer lays, as we have seen, 
the greatest stress upon its sufficiency, as evidence of the 
early disloyalty of New England; and Dr. Robertson found it 
" a usurpation;" an unambiguous indication of" the aspiring 

* Vol. iv, History of America. 



PEACE OF 1763. nS 

spirit prevalent among the people of Massachusetts."* I can- SECT. vi. 
not retrain from otfeiing, in answer to these invidious sugges- Si^^v-**^ 
tions, a quotation from a paper on the subject published in 
the English Monthly Maguzine lor January, 1799. It com- 
prises an anecdote which gives the proper air to ihe orthodox 
historian's umbrage " at the tree stampt upon the Boston coin 
as an apt symbol of its progressive vigour." 

" It seems to be the opinion of Dr. Robertson, that the 
people of Massachusetts assumed this ' peculiar prerogative of 
sovereignty' in defiance of, or at least, in opposition to, the 
royal authority. But it ought to be particularly noticed, that 
the first coinage was made in the year 1652. Instead, there- 
fore, of ascribing this measure to the ' aspiring spirit of the 
people of Massachusetts,' the Doctor might just as well have 
said, that the colonists being nearly deserted, at this time, by 
the rulers at home, on account of the civil wars, and the vari- 
ous forms of government which afterwards followed, were 
obliged to coin money from absolute necessity. The follow- 
ing extract from the Memoirs of the late truly patriotic Tho- 
mas HoUis, will prove this to have been the principal, if not 
the onlv cause, and consequently point out the mistake which 
Dr. Robertson has inadvertently fallen into." 

" Sir Thomas Temple, brother to Sir William Temple, re- 
sided several years in New England during the inierregnum. 
After the Restoration, when he returned to England, the king 
sent for him, and discoursed with him on the state of atf'airs in 
the Massachusetts, and discovered great warmth against that 
colony. Among other things, he said they had invaded his 
prerogative by coining money. Sir Thomas, who was a real 
friend to the colony, told his majesiy, that the colonists had but 
little acquaintance with law, and that they thought i( no 
crime to make money for their own use. In the course of the 
conversation. Sir Thomas took some of the money out of his 
pocket, and presented it to the king. On one side of the coin 
was a pine tree, of (hat kind which is thirk and bushy at the 
top. Charles asked what tree that was? Sir Thomas inform- 
ed him it was the royal oak, which preserved his majesty's 
life. This account of ihe matter brought the king into good 
humour, and disposed him to hear what Sir Thomas had to 
say in their favour, calling them a ' parcel of honest dogs.''"''* 

" The jocular turn which Sir Thomas gave to the story, 
was evidently calculated to amuse the monarch in his own 

* Vol. iv. History of America, 



174 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

PART I. way, and had the desired effect, in disposing him to hear with 
^-^"^"^^Sm^ good humour, that just defence of the colonies which Sir Tho- 
mas was so well qualified to make. We find he pleaded, that 
the colonists thought it no crime to make money for their own 
use; at a time too, when the confusions in the mother coun- 
try prevented them from receiving those occasional supplies of 
coin, which were absolutely necessary for common circula- 
tion. Such an uncommon exigency required an uncommon 
expedient; and this will account for the proceedings of the 
people of Massachusetts in a more rational manner, than Dr. 
Robertson has done." * 

By the act of 14 Geo. II. c. 37, the Americans were re- 
strained from creating banks; by that of 24 Geo. II. c. 53, 
the governors and assemblies of the respective American pro- 
vinces were prohibited from making " any act, order, resolu- 
tion, or vote, whereby j)aper bills or bills of credit, shall be 
created or issued, under any pretence whatever; or from pro- 
tracting or postponing the times limited, or the provisions 
made, for calling in such as were then actually issued and sub- 
sisting." After the peace of 1763, most of the colonies were 
reduced, in consequence of the enforcement of these and other 
regulations of a like purport, to a situation worse than that of 
Massachusetts in 1672. It is thus slated by Macpherson in 
his Annals. " Their foreign trade was almost entirely ruined 
by the rigorous execution of the new orders against smuggling, 
and the collection of the duties in hard silver, which soon 
drained the country of any little real money circulating in it. 
And, as if government had intended to prevent the colonists 
from having even the shadow of money, another act was pass- 
ed, in a few days after that for the new duties, declaring that 
no paper bills, to be thenceforth issued, should be made a legal 
tender in payment, and enjoining those in circulation to be 
sunk (that is, paid off in hard money) at the limited time." 

Had the colonies — some of which were driven to the ex- 
pedient of barter, — possessed bullion, and proceeded to coin 
it, on this emergency, it would not have been difficult for any 
liberal enquirer to decide whether the proceeding was to be 
interpreted into " an indication of an aspiring spirit," or into a 
mere and natural effort for temporary relief from an oppressive 
privation. I find it the more unpardonable in Dr. Robert- 
son to have mistaken or misrepresented the views of the colo- 
nists, since he has himself furnished an explanation of much 
of their apparent indocility in the following paragraph: " In 
writing the history of the English settlements in America, it is 



PEACE OF 1763. 175 

necessary to trace Uie progress of the restraining laws with SECT. VI, 
accuracy, as in every subseqiKiit transaction, we may observe \,^-v-^^ 
a perpetual exertion on the part of the mother country, to en- 
force and extend them; ami on tJie part of the colonies, endea- 
vours no less unremitting to elude or to obstruct their opera- 
tion." 

The inveterate design of the colonies to become indepen- 
dent, continued to be a leading topic in the British parliament, 
notwithstanding the evidence furnished In their conduct on the 
repeal of the stamp act in 1766.* We have a specimen of 
the manner in which the charge was supported, in the argu- 
meni of Sir Richard Sutton, who said in the House of Com- 
mons, on the 22d April, 1774, " If you ask an American — 
who is his master, he will tell you he has none; nor any go- 
vernor but Jesus Christ!" Lord Mansfield was quite sure that 
the Americans had meditated a state of independency, par- 
ticularly since the peace of Paris, and upon this ground 
chieHy, he rested his celebrated declaration in (he House of 
Lords, " if wc do not kill the Americans, the Americans will 
kill us." In the quotation which I have made iVom one of 
his speeches on the same point, IJavenant is brought forward 
as having " foreseen that America would endeavour to form 
herself into a separate and independent state, whenever she 
found herself of sufficient strength lO contend with the mother 
country." The learned judge did not, however, deal fairly 
with Davenant. This great political teacher — by far the 
ablest of his time, and whose treatises, according to his edi- 
tor. Sir Charles Whitworth, " may be properly called the 
foundation of the political establishment of England" — had 
delivered, in his Discourse on the Plantation Trade, opinions 
respecting the colonies, which Lord Mansfield would have 
been very unwilling to produce in their real shape. The fol- 
lowing, written in 1698, areof this number, and will compen- 
sate for the space they may occupy in these pages, by their his- 
torical value. 

" Generally speaking our colonies while they have English 
blood in their veins, and have relations in England, and while 



* " when the news of the repeal of tlie st.imp act reached America," 
says Macpherson, " it was, notwitiislaiidliig tlie disagreeabie nature of 
the concomitant act, received with universal demonstrations of joy. 
Sul)script)ons were made for erecting- statues to Mr. Pitt, who had ex- 
erted himself for the repeal; and resolutions were made to prepare new 
dresses made of Bntish manufactures for celebrating- the 4th of June, the 
birth clay of their most gracions sovereii^v, and to give their homespun 
clothes to the poor," &c, 



176 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

PART I. they can get by trading with us, the stronger and greater they 
'^^'^''^^^ grow, the more this crown and kingdom will get by them; and 
nothing but such an arbitrary power as shall make them despe- 
rate^ can bring them to rebeV 

" While we keep a strict eye upon their conduct, and 
chiefly watch their growth in shipping of strength and for war, 
whatever other increase they make, either in wealth or in 
number of inhabitants, cannot be turned against us, and can 
never be detrimental to this nation While we are strong and 
they weak at sea, they may be compelled to obey the laws of 
England, and not to trade directly and upon their own account 
with other countries. I do not think the greatness these colo- 
nies may arrive at in a natural course, and in the progress of 
time can be dangerous to England. To build ships in the way 
of trade or for their own defence, can administer no true cause 
of jealousy." 

*•' It is true, if in New England, or in other parts there, 
they should pretend to set up manufactures, and to clothe as 
well as feed their neighbours, their nearness and low price 
would give them such advantages over this nation, as might 
prove of pernicious consequence; but this fear seems very re- 
mote, because new inhabitants, especially in a large extent of 
country, find their account better in rearing cattle, tilling the 
earth, clearing it of woods, making fences, and by erecting 
necessary buildings, than in setting upof manufactures, which 
is the last work of a people settled three or four hundred years, 
growing numerous and wanting territory." 

" When we contemplate the great increase and improve- 
ments which have been made in New England, Carolina, and 
Pennsylvania, we cannot but think it injustice not to say, that 
a large share of this general good to those part^ is owing to the 
education of the planters, which, if not entirely virtuous, has, 
at least, a show of virtue." 

" And to the sobriety and temperate way of living, prac- 
tised by the dissenters retired to America, we may justly at- 
tribute the increase they have made there of inhabitants, 
which is beyond the usual proportion to be any where else 
observed." 

" Had it not been for provinces begun and carried on by 
people of sobriety, the English empire abroad would be much 
weaker than it is at present." 

" If ever any thing great or good be done for our English 
colonies, industry must have its due recompense, and that 
cannot be, without encouragement to it, which, perhaps, is 
only to be brought about by confirming their liberties.''^ 



PEACE OP 1763. it? 

" And as great care should be taken in this respect, so, SECT. VI. 
withour doubt, it is advisable, that no little emulations, or pri- ^-rf'-v-^ 
vale interests of neighbour governors, nor that the petitions of 
hungry courtiers at home, should prevail to discourage those 
particular colonies, who in a few years have raised themselves 
by their own charge, prudence, and industry, to the wealth 
and greatness they are now arrived at, without expense to the 
crown: Upon which account, any innovations or breach of 
their original charters (besides that it seems a breach of the 
pubiic faith) may, peradventure, not tend to the king's pro- 
fit." 

" We shall not pretend to determine whether the people in 
the Plantations have a right to all the privileges of English 
subjects; but the contrary notion is, perhaps, too much en- 
tertained and practised in places which happen not to be dis- 
tant from St. Stephen^s Chapel. Upon which account it will, 
peradventure, be a great security and encouragement to these 
industrious people, if a declaratory law were made, that 
Englishmen have right to all the laws of England, whilethey 
remain in countries subject to the dominion of this king- 
dom." 

2. On the side of the British government, the bias and im- 
pressions taken after the epoch of 1763, were altogether, and 
by an almost incredible perversion of heart and of judgment, 
the reverse of those which I have ascribed to the colonies. It 
was to be expected that the exertions and sufferings of the 
latter during the war, and the value of the results to Great 
Britain, would have warmed the feelings, and relaxed the 
gripe, of any ministry or parliament, however greedy of reve- 
nue, or tenacious of dominion. The British nation had ac- 
quired, by the war, lands more than equal in value, to the 
amount of all the expense she had incurred in America from 
its first settlement; and she saw opened to her new avenues 
of a most beneficial commerce. No share was sought or reap- 
ed by the colonies, in the millions of acres which they had 
helped to conquer; they seemed to desire no more than the 
loosening of their fetters so far, as to enable tbem to recover 
from their wounds. 

But, to allow them an interval of ease entered not into the 
imagination or heart of their task-masters. The Lords of the 
Admiralty issued forthwith, instructions to the commanders on 
the American station, to enforce all those acts of trade to 
which I have adverted, in the most rigid manner. " The 
ministry" says Gordon, " obliged all sea-officers stationed on 
Vol. h—Z 



178 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

PART I, the American coasts, to act in the capacity of the meanest re- 
^^^^''^^^ venue officers, making them submit to the usual custom-house 
oaths and regulations for that purpose. This proved a great 
grievance to the American merchants and traders. Many il- 
legal seizures were made; no redress could be had but from 
Britain. Besides, the American trade with the Spaniards, by 
which the British manufactures were vended in return, for 
gold and silver in coin or bullion, cochineal, &c. as occasion 
served, was almost instantly destroyed by the armed ships un- 
der the new regulations."* Immediately after the ratifica- 
tion of the definitive treaty, the intentions of the government 
to quarter ten thousand troops in America, and to support 
them at the expense of the colonies, were authentically an- 
nounced. Mr. Ssrenville avowed it, in the House of Com- 
mons, to be his purpose, to raise the money for the support of 
those troops, by a duty on the foreign sugar and molasses im- 
ported into America, and by stamps on all papers legal and 
mercantile. In 1764, Parliament passed an act imposing du- 
ties on the two first articles; and to secure its execution, the 
penalties for the breach of it, or of any other act relating to 
the trade and revenues of the British colonies, were made re- 
coverable in any court of admiralty in the colony where the of- 
fence should be committed, or — at the election of the informer 
or prosecutor — in any court af vice -admiralty, which might be 
appointed by the crown in any part of America. Thus the 
trial by jury might be withheld, and the defendant called to 
support his claim to property seized, at distances which 
would make the expense of the pursuit more than the value of 
the prize. Moreover, the act provided that he could recover 
neither costs nor damages, if the judge certified that there was 
probable cause of seizure. 

I do not know of any moral phenomenon which history 
offers, more hateful — than that those who were entrusted in 
Great Britain with the supreme administration, should not only 
have proved utterly insensible to the services and distresses 
of the colonies, but have at once resolved to take advantage 
of the expulsionof her rival from the American continent, effect- 
ed, in great part, through their vigorous assistance, and of the 
mighty increase and complete disengagement of the national 
strength, produced by the same generous co-operation — to 
enforce in all its rigour the whole digest of commercial sub- 
jection; to plunge them into what Mr. Burke so justly describ- 
ed as " a perfect uncompensated slavery, by joining together 

* Vol. i. n. 20r. 



PEACE OP 1763. 179 

the restraints of an universal internal and external monopoly, SECT. vi. 
with an universal internal and external taxation." s.^-v'^ 

There seems to be now but one voice throughout the 
world, respecting the expedients employed to establish this 
cumulative despotism — the revenue-acts, stamp-acts, re- 
straining and starving acts, Boston port acts, acts for dis- 
franchising legislatures, for quartering soldiers in private 
houses, dragging men to England for trial, &c. English 
writers of every party-denomination, finding that the verdict 
of Europe was given unanimously and irreversibly, against 
this headlong career of injustice and folly, have concurred in 
passing upon it, themselves, the severest sentence of repro- 
bation. They tell us without hesitation that a scheme of 
new modelling the colonial government, so as to increase the 
power and patronage of the crown, and enable ministers to 
enrich their relations and dependents, was the cause of the 
war, and of the loss of America. They adduce these as the 
prominent features of the hopeful scheme : — 

First, to raise a revenue in America by act of parliament, 
to be applied to support an army there; to pay a large salary 
to the governors, another to the lieutenant governors, salaries 
to the judges of the law and admiralty; and thus to render the 
whole government, executive and judicial, entirely indepen- 
dent of the people, and wholly dependent on the minister. 
Second, to make a new division of the colonies, to reduce the 
number of them by making the small ones more extensive, to 
make them all royal governments, with a peerage in each,&c. 

Mr. Burke gave to parliament, in his unanswerable speech 
on American taxation, a full account of the dawn and progress 
of the new plan of colonial administration. His relation stands 
as a monument of the genius of that rule, under which the co- 
lonies, by their own admirable energies, and a train of provi- 
dential dispensations, had grown to a strength, and preserved a 
spirit, too firm to be broken by its utmost pressure, when all 
other barriers to its natural action were removed. The fol- 
lowing is a part of the testimony of Burke: 

" At the period immediately on the close of the war of 1756, 
a scheme of government new in many things seemed to have 
been adopted. I saw, or thought I saw, several symptoms of 
a great change, whilst I sat in your gallery, a good while be- 
fore I had the honour of a seat in this house. At that period 
the necessity was established of keeping up no less than twenty 
new regiments, with twenty colonels capable of seats in this 
house. This scheme was adopted with very general applause 
from all sides, at the very time that, by your conquests in 



180 Dispositions from the 

PART I. America, your danger from foreign attempts in that part of the 
'"'^'-^^''^t^ world was much lessened, or indeed rather quiie over. When 
this huge increase of military esiablishment was resolved on, 
a revenue was to be found to support so great a burthen. 
Country gentlemen, the great patrons of economy, and the 
great resisters of a standing armed force, would not have en- 
tered with much alacrity into the vole for so large and so ex- 
pensive an army, if they had been very sure that they were to 
continue to pay for it. But hopes of another kind were held 
out to them; and, in particular, J well remember, that Mr. 
Townshend, in a brilliant harangue on this subject, did dazzle 
them, by playing before their eyes the image of a revenue to 
be raised in America." 

The conduct of the colonies in resisting this scheme did not 
want for advocates in the parliament; and we may claim for 
it particularly, the unqualiiied sanction of Camden and Chat- 
ham, the most enlightened and conscientious among the Bri- 
tish statesmen of that day. " We have been," said the first, 
" the original aggressors in this business; if we obstinately 
persist, we are fairly answerable for all the consequences 
When we contend that we aim only to defend and enforce our 
own rights, i positively deny it. I contend that America has 
been driven, by cruel necessity, to defend her rights from the 
united attacks of violence, oppression, and injustice. I con- 
tend that America has been indisputably aggrieved. Perhaps, 
as a domineering Englishman^ wishing to enjoy the ideal be- 
nefit of such a claim of taxation, I might urge it with earnest- 
ness, and endeavour to carry my point; but if, on the other 
hand, I resided in America, that I felt, or was to feel, the 
effects of such manifest injustice, I certainly should resist the 
attempt with that degree of ardour so daring a violation oi 
what should be held dearer than life itself, ought to enkindle 
in the breast of every freeman." 

" Pursuing the ideas of a native American, or a person re- 
siding in that country, what must be the sense they feel of the 
repeated injuries that have for a succession of years past been 
heaped on them? To have their property, under the idea of 
asserting a right to tax them, voted away by one act of parlia- 
ment, and their eliarters, under an idea of the supreme autho- 
rity of the British legislature, swept away by another vote of 
parliament. Thus depriving them, or rather claiming a right 
to dispose of every shilling they are worth, without one of 
them being represented by the persons pretending to exercise 
this rigiil; and thus stripping them of their natural rights, 
growing out of the constitution, confirmed by charter, and 




PEACE OF 1763. 181 

recognized by every branch of the legislature, without exa- SECT.vi. 
mination, or even without hearing."* 

" The Americans," said Chatham, " are a wise, industrious, 
and prudent people. They possess too much good sense, and 
too much spirit, ever to submit to hold their properties on so 
precarious and disgraceful a tenure. They see us, besides, 
immersed in luxury, dissipation, venality, and corruption; they 
perceive, that, even if they were willing to contribute, to what 
purposes their contributions would be applied; to nothing but 
the extinction of public and private virtue there, as has already 
been the case here."! 

An American finds not only instruction, but a gratification 
such as is commonly enjoyed, in looking back upon a hideous 
evil from which you have lastingly escaped, when he retraces 
the portraits drawn by near observers, whose title to credit is 
beyond dispute, of the cabinets and men to whom the English 
monarch and nation committed the liberties and fortunes of the 
colonies. Let us see how they are described by three states- 
men of different political views and connexions, and of the 
fullest and most intimate experience in the ministerial govern- 
ment of the kingdom. In the debate of the House of Lords 
of Feb. 1st, 1775, Lord Mansfield said — " I have seen much 
of courts, parliaments and cabinets, and have been a frequent 
witness to the means used to acquire popularity, and the base 
and mean purposes to which that popularity has been after- 
wards employed. I have been in cabinets where the great 
struggle has not been to advance the public interest; not by 
coalition and mutual assistance to strengthen the hands of 
government; but by cabals, jealousy and mutual distrust, to 
thwart each others designs, and to circumvent each other, in 
order to obtain power and pre-eminence." 

Lord Chatham, in concluding the defence of his plan of 
Conciliation at the silting of the Lords of the 1st February, 
1775, apostrophized the ministers of the day thus: 

" Yet when I consider the whole case as it lies before me, 
I am not much astonished; I am not surprised that men who 
hate liberty should detest those that prize it; or that those who 
want virtue themselves, should endeavour to persecute those 
who possess it. Were I disposed to carry this theme to ihe 
extent that truth would fully bear me out in, I could demon- 
strate that the whole of your political conduct has been one 
continued series of weakness, temerity, despotism, ignorance, 

* Debate in the House of Lords, Nov. 15, 1775. 
f Ibid. 



182 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

PART I. futility, negligence, blundering, and the most notorious servili- 
^>^^v-^ ty, incapacity and corruption. On reconsideration, I must 
allow you one merit, a strict attention to your own interests; 
in that view, you appear sound statesmen and able politicians. 
You well know if the present measure (of reconciliation with 
the colonies) should prevail, that you must instantly lose your 
places. I doubt much whether you will be able to keep them 
on any terms: but sure I am, that such are your well known 
characters and abilities, any plan of reconciliation, however 
moderate, wise, and feasible, must fail in your hands. Such, 
then, being your precarious situation, who can wonder that 
you should put a negative on any measure which must annihi- 
late your power, deprive you of your emoluments, and at once 
reduce you to that state of insignificance, for which God and 
nature designed you." 

Earlier — in the debate respecting the disorders in America, 
1770, — Lord Shelburne held this language in the same house: 

'"■ My lords, — I scarcely remember a period in history, an- 
cient or modern, where the ministers of a state, however dead to 
the feelings of justice, were so lost to the sentiments of shame, 
that they gloried to be detested by every honest individual of 
their country. This pinnacle of profligacy was reserved for 
the present ministers of Great Britain, who have adopted the 
principle of the Roman tyrant as far as they were able; and 
if our heads were beyond their power, have at least cut off all 
our liberties with a blow." 

3. As the fellowship of enterprise, suffering, and object, 
during the war of 175G, between the colonies and the mother 
country, the copious etfusion of their blood in the same mili- 
tary operations, and their joint triumph, failed to inspire her 
even with the sympathies natural to the most common alliance, 
the more intimate relations with them into which thai war 
brought her; the opportunities which it afforded for a thorough 
observation of their character and situation; had no effect in 
curing her profound ignorance on these points. It appears, 
indeed, the less extraordinary, that the metropolitan councils 
should have remained in this state, when it is noted, that most 
of the royal governors in America seemed, with all the advan- 
tages of their situation, to have no clearer insight. Indig- 
nation might relax into mirth, when we read the language 
which the governor of Massachusetts addressed to his princi- 
pals in 1774. " The colonists talk of fixing a plan of govern- 
ment of their own; and it is someu-hat surprising^ that so many 
in the other provinces interest themselves so much in the be- 



PEACE OF 1763. 183 

half of this of Massachusetts. I find they have some warm SECT. VI. 
friends in New York and Philadelphia; and I learn by an offi- ^^^^-v-^ 
cer who left Carolina, the latter end of August, that the people 
of Charleston are as mad as they are here.''''* 

If any British statesman could be expected to understand 
thoroughly the nature and condition of the Americans, it was 
Chatham; yet, he is reported to have spoken in parliament in 
1776, in this strain: 

" There were not wanting some, when I had the honour to 
serve his majesty, to propose to me to burn my fingers with 
an American stamp-act. With the enemy at their back, with 
our bayonefs at their breasts, in the day of their distress, per- 
haps the Americans would have submitted to the imposition; 
but it would have been taking an ungenerous and unjust ad- 
vantage. A great deal has been said without doors, of the 
power, of the strength of America. It is a topic that ought to 
be cautiously meddled with. In a good cause, on a sound 
bottom, the force of this country can crush America to atoms. 
I know the valour of your troops. I know the skill of your 
officers. There is not a company of foot that lias served in 
America., out of which you may not pick a man of stifficient 
knmvledge and experience., to make a governor of a colony there.'''' 

In their first projects for subverting the liberties of Ame- 
rica; in every step which they took as they prosecuted their 
aim; in all that they uttered, the ministry betrayed that they 
were entire strangers to her spirit and resources. Indeed, the 
almost universal ignorance of the British on these points, 
rendered them altogether unfit to hold dominion over the 
colonies, and constituted, in itself, a sufficient reason why 
the connexion should be dissolved. We may judge of the de- 
lusions, common to rulers and people, by the following speci- 
mens drawn from the parliamentary debates. 

" My Lords," said the Lord Chancellor Northington to 
the Upper House, in 1766,t "the colonies are become too 
big to be governed by the laws they at first set out with. 
They have therefore run into confusion, and it will be the po- 
licy of this country to form a plan of laws for them. If they 
withdraw allegiance, you must withdraw protection; and then 
the little state of Genoa, or the kingdom, or rather republic of 
Sweden, may soon overrun them.'''' 

" I have the best reasons for thinking," said the prime mi- 

* Letter from the Hon. Gov. Gage to the Earl of Dartmouth, dated 
Boston, 20th Sept. 1774. 

f Debate on disturbances in America. 



184 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

PART I nister, Lorrl North, in 1770,* " that the American associations 
-^"^'"^^ not lO buy British goods, must be speedily seii'-desiroyed; be- 
cause the Americans, to distress us, will not injure themselves; 
because they are already weary of giving an advanced price 
for coirmiodiries they are obliged lo purchase; and because, 
after all the hardships which they say their commerce groans 
under, it is still obviously their interest not to commence ma- 
nufactures." 

The eloquent Glover, in the speech at the bar of the Com- 
mous, which I have already cited, taught that body a more 
accurate lesson, while he took an instructive review of the 
succebsive delusions of the nation. 

" I would have accompanied others more speculative through 
their several gradations of hope, still disappointed, and still 
reviving, but for one observation, which I have generally kept 
concealed, but will soon reveal to you. But for this observa- 
tion I might have concurred with the public belief, that the 
capital of a province, now declared in rebellion, would have 
submitted on the landing of a ftw regiments; this failing, that 
other provinces from ancient jealousy and disgust would not 
have interfered, and would have rather sought their own ad- 
vantage out of that town's distress; this failing, that (hey never 
would have proceeded to the length of con-^tituting a certain 
inauspicious assembly among themselves; this failing, that the 
members of such assembly would have disagreed, and not 
framed a single resolution. This last hope having proved abor- 
tive, a new one is popularly adopted, that the first intelligence 
of enforcing measures, at least the bare commencement of 
their execution will tame the most refractory spirits. I will 
here state the grounds of this, and all the preceding hopes; 
afterwards with your indulgence the ground of my original and 
continued doubts. 

" Our trading nation naturally assumed, that the present 
contention would be with traders in America. The stock of 
a trader, whether his own, or in part, and often the greatest 
part, a property of others, confiding in him, is personal, lodged 
in a magazine, and exposed in seasons of commotion to in- 
stantaneous devastation. The circumstance of such property, 
the considerations, suggested by common prudence, by <he 
sense of common justice to those, who have given a generous 
credit, rarely make room for that intrepidity, which meets 
force with force. Hence I admit, that the mere traffickers 
would have submitted at first, and will now, whenever they 

* Debate on American tea duty. 



PEACE OF 1763. 185 

^are. The reason, why they have not dared, is the foundation SECT. VI. 
of my doubts. v-^-v^-^.' 

" I am speaking to an enlightened assembly, conversant 
with their own annals. In those ages, the reverse of commer- 
cial, when your ancestors filled the ranks of men at arms, and 
composed the cavalry of England, of whom did the infantry 
consist.'^ A race unknown to other kingdoms, and in the pre- 
sent opulence of traffic, almost extinct in this, the yeomanry of 
England; an order of men, possessing paternal inheritance, 
cultivated under their own care, enough to preserve indepen* 
dence, and cherish the generous sentiments attendant on that 
condition; without superfluity for idleness, or effeminate in- 
dulgence. 

" Of such doth North America consist. The race is re- 
vived there in greater numbers, and in a greater proportion to 
the rest of the inhabitants; and in such the power of that con- 
tinent resides. These keep the traffickers in awe. These, 
many hundred thousands in multitude, with enthusiasm in 
their hearts, with the petition, the bill of rights, and the acts 
of settlement, silent and obsolete in some places, but vociferous 
and fresh, as newly born, among them; these, hot with the 
blood of their progenitors, the enthusiastic scourges at one 
period, and the revolutional expellers, of tyranny, at another; 
these, unpractised in frivolous dissipation and ruinous profu- 
sion^ standing armed on the spot; possessing, delivered down 
from their fathers, a property not moveable, nor exposed to 
total destruction, therefore maintainable, and exciting all the 
spirit and vigour of defence; these, under such circumstances 
of number, animation and manners, their lawyers and clergy 
blowing the trumpet, are we to encounter with a handful of 
men sent three thousand miles over the ocean to seek such 
adversaries on their own paternal ground. — But these will not 
fight, says the general voice of Great Britain,^'' &c. 

It was long before the British government and the majority 
of the British people, could be persuaded that America woidd 
have the resolution to look the mother country in the face, and 
steadily resist its immense power. They supposed a success- 
ful resistance impossible, arguing from considerations natural 
enough in the frame of mind, and habits of action, almost 
universal throughout Europe. America consisted, to their eye, 
only of parts of a nation, and those the meanest in quality, 
because the least artificial in the modification, and tinselled 
in the drapery; she had neither standing armies, disciplined 
forces, fleets nor fortresses; she wanted great and small arms, 
flints, ammunition; she laboured under a scarcity of coin; she 

Vol. I. — A a 



186 DISPOSITIONS PROM THE 

PART I. would have terrible difficulty in procuring clothing, salt, medi- 
•^-^''v-^^ cines; jealousies rankled between the several provinces, and 
must quickly break their precipitate league, &c. When the 
revolution took a consistent character, and generated resources, 
its impetus was ascribed, by these sagacious reasoners, to 
any other cause, than the heroic spirit which informed it, and 
which easily surmounted all common obstacles. They were 
never touched by what they could not discern, and their infa- 
tuation continued therefore nearly the same in all points. In 
1776, their commissioner on the coast of America, Lord 
Howe, was instructed to offer pardon upon submission; and 
the letters which passed between this herald of clemency and 
Dr. Franklin, as one of the committee of conference deputed 
by Congress, were published the same year, in London, to show 
the insolence of the insurgents in refusing the offer of pardon 
upon submission. 

The following extract from a speech of Lord George Ger- 
main, of May, 1777, in the House of Commons, will furnish 
still more striking evidence of the manner in which the mi- 
nistry indulged their own spleen, and fed the delusion of their 
followers. His Lordship said — " As to the campaign, he 
thought he had the greatest reason to expect success from the 
army of General Howe, being in good order, and more numer- 
ous from recruits than in the last campaign; while that of the 
rebels was in much worse order, and less numerous: that the 
fleet was also reinforced with some ships of the line, which 
were wanting last year; that he thought himself farther found- 
ed in his expectation from the minds of the people turning; 
from their experiencing (he misery of anarchy, confusion, and 
despotism, instead of the happiness and security they enjoyed 
under the legal government of this country; that these emo- 
tions had operated so strongly in their minds, that very many 
deserters had left the rebel army, and come in to General 
Howe with their arms; many hundreds were coming in every 
day: that he had formed his opinion from the circumstances of 
the Congress having given up the government, confessing them- 
selves unequal to it, and created Mr. Washington dictator of 
.America; these circumstances, he thought, promised divisions 
among them. That another circumstance which every day 
proved of yet greater importance, was, their being disappoint- 
ed in their expectations of assistance from France. They had 
been buoyed up with that hope, and made to believe, that a 
superior French fleet would be seen riding on their coasts; in 
all which they now felt themselves deceived, and resented it 
accordingly. That they had met with the same disappoint- 



( 



PEACE OF 1763. ' 187 

ment from Spain; not that he asserted they had not received SECT. VI. 
underhand assistance from both, in officers, &c. but what they '-^"^-^^ 
were promised was open avowed assistance. Yet, Sir, added 
his lordship, for the protection of France they would pay 
largely; they have offered largely; they have, by their pre- 
tended ambassadors, actually offered to the French court all our 
West India islands! There is liberality. Sir! There is love of 
freedom, to consign so readily to French dominion and des- 
potism, the whole West Indies!"* 

It was about the date of this happy effusion, — only a few 
months before the surrender of Bourgoyne, — that Lord Stor- 
mont, the British ambassador at the court of Versailles, being 
addressed by Messrs. Franklin and Deane, commissioners of 
the American Congress at >he same court, on the subject of an 
exchange of prisoners, answered in these words — '' The 
King's ambassador receives no applications from rebels unless 
they come to implore his Majesty's clemency P"* 

4. Besides the consideration of the colossal power of the 
mother country, and the many acknowledged obstacles to suc- 
cessful resistance inherent in the condition and habits of the 
colonies, other encouragements were wanted by the ministe- 
rial majority in parliament, and still more by the body of the 
people, for perseverance in the system of tyrannical coercion. 
In defiance of the fresh experience of the war of '56; of 
the whole current of the colonial history; of positive evidence 
of every description; the moral and intellectual character of 
the colonists was made to furnish those encouragements. They 
were at once cowards, knaves, and dolts, rebellious and inso- 
lent, whom it would be easy to subdue, and just to bring un- 
der a rigorous discipline. The most was made on every oc- 
casion, of these pretended traits and dispositions, for the sup- 
port of the ministerial policy, the gratification of spleen, or the 
display of wit, both in and out of parliament. What passed 
in that body ought not to be forgotten; for, it affords a portent- 
ous and instructive example of national arrogance trampling 
on all public decorum, all experience and verisimilitude, all 
self-interest and self-respect; all justice and gratitude; all the 
most sacred regards, and endearing affinities. 

With respect to the House of Commons, a single extract 
from the Reports of its debates, may suffice. The tenor of this 
extract will strike every reader who is familiar with the tone, 
and favourite topics, of the late English publications concern- 

* See note L 



188 DISPOSITIONS FROM THK 

PART I. ing America. Colonel Grant said — " he had served in Amc- 
'^<^'~"'"^-^ rica: knew the Americans very well; was certain they would 
not fight; they would never dare to face an English army; and 
that they did not possess any of the qualifications necessary to 
make a good soldier; he repeated many of their common-place 
expressions; ridiculed their enthusiasm in religion, and drew a 
disagreeable picture of their manners and ways of living.''''^ 

The picture sketched by the gallant colonel is said to have 
produced much mirth in the House, and obtained implicit cre- 
dit from the majority. The chronicles of the time relate that 
a suspicion of its accuracy did not arise, until some months 
after, when news was received in England of the battle of 
Breeds' Hill; and of the expedition to Canada, which, as it is 
related by Brougham in his Colonial Policy, furnishes an ex- 
cellent comment on the speech of Grant. 

" While the most sanguine friends of American indepen- 
dence scarcely ventured to hope that the colonists would be 
able to maintain their ground against the forces of the mother 
countrv, they astonished the world, by commencing offensive 
operations. The very first campaign of that unhappy war, was 
signalized by a successful expedition of the revolters against 
the stations of the British forces on the frontiers of Canada; 
and the gates of that province were thus thrown open to the 
most formidable invasion, which threatened (he total conquest 
of the country before the end of the same year. The gallant 
leaders to whom those operations were entrusted, actually re- 
duced the whole of Upper Canada, and were only foiled in 
their attempts on Quebec, by the ill choice of the season, owing 
chiefly to the divisions of opinion that constantly attend the 
offensive measures of governments newly formed upon a popu- 
lar model; the union of the besieged in defence of their large 
property, which they were taught to believe would be exposed 
to the plunder of the rebels; and the extensive powers wisely 
confided by the British government to General Carleton — 
powers formerly unknown in any of the colonies, and utterly 
inconsistent with a government bearing the faintest resem- 
blance to a popular form. Thus had the infant republic of 
America, immediately at the commencement of separate ope- 
rations, and above half a year previous to the formal declara- 
tion of independence, almost succeeded in the conquest of a 

* Debate of Feb. 2d, 1775. This Colonel Grant was the same that 
commanded the -detachment whose defeat near Fort Duquesne I have 
noticed in my 4th Section, and which was preserved from utter de- 
struction by the bravery of the Virg'inia militia. 



PEACE OF 1763. 189 

British colony, strong by its natural position, by the vigour of SECT. VI. 
its internal administration, by (he experience of the veteran ^^.^^v-^»i-' 
troops who defended it, and by the skill of the gallant officer 
who commanded these forces; while the only advantages of 
the assailants consisted in the romantic valour of their leaders, 
the enthusiasm of men fighting in their own cause, and the 
vigorous councils of an independent community."*" 

In the House of Lords, the empyrean of British legislation 
and senatorial dignity, " that great body of his majesty's brave 
and faithful subjects with which his American provinces hap- 
pily abounded,"! was still more roughly handled than in St. 
Stephen's Chapel. " A little before I left London, in 1775," 
says Franklin,:}: " being at the House of Lords when a debate 
in which Lord Camden was to speak, and who, indeed, spoke 
admirably on American affairs, 1 was much disgusted from 
the ministerial side, by many base reflections on American 
courage, religion, understanding, &c. in which we were treat- 
ed with the utmost contempt, as the lowest of mankind, and 
almost of a different species from the English of Britain; but 
particularly the American honesty was abused by some of the 
lords, who asserted that we were all knaves, and wanted only 
by this dispute to avoid paying our debts; that if we had any 
sense of equity or justice, we should offer payment of the 
tea," &c. 

The parliamentary history furnishes copious proof of this 
statement of Franklin. Such specimens abound as the follow- 
ing: " Earl Talbot said, the noble Earl who spoke last has 
certainly hit off one leading feature of the Americans. His 
lordship tells you that even in the midst of their zeal for free- 
dom and independence, they were not able to conquer their 
natural propensity to fraud and concealment^'''' &c. &c. 

" The duke of Chandos rose, and moved an address of 
thanks. His grace began with slating the many public and 
private virtues of the sovereign, and the obstinacy, baseness, and 
ingratitude, of his rebellious subjects in Jlmerica" &c. &c. 

The extent to which this obloquy was carried on one point, 
is evidenced, even by a protest of the minority, who adduced 
it as one of their motives to dissent, in the following remark- 
able language: " We do not apprehend that the topic so much 
insisted upon by a lord high in office, namely, the cowardice of 
his JMajesty'^s American subjects, to have any weight in itself, 
or be at all agreeable to the dignity of sentiment which ought 

* Book II. Sect. i. + Vide page 121 . -i Memoirs, vol. i. 



190 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

PARTI, to characterize this House. This is to call for resistance, 
^■**''^''^**-' and to provoke rebellion by the most powerful of all motives 
which can act upon men of any degree of spirit and sensi- 
bility." 

The lord high in office alluded to in the protest, was the 
Earl of Sandwich, who presided over the admiralty, and pos- 
sessed a considerable share of influence in the cabinet. His 
speech is a precious sample, of the general strain of the mother 
country at this period, respecting her transatlantic offspring. It 
is a model which has hardly been surpassed in the multitude 
of similar effusions at our expense, to which almost every 
year since its date has given birth. Its pleasantry is inimita- 
ble; and the truth of the details, as well as the delicacy of the 
' tone, will be more strongly felt, on a reference to what I have 

narrated, in regard to the conduct of the provincials at Louis- 
bourg, and the efficacy of their conquest. 

" The Earl of Sandwich said — suppose the colonies do 
abound in men, what does that signify? They are raw, undis- 
ciplined, cowardly men. I wish, instead of 40, or 50,000 
of these brave fellows, they would produce in the field at least 
200,000. The more the better: the easier would be the con- 
quest; if they did not run away they would starve themselves 
into compliance with our measures. 1 will tell your lordships 
an anecdote that happened at the siege of Louisbourg. Sir 
Pe'er Warren told me, that in order to try the courage of the 
Americans, he ordered that a great number of them should be 
placed in the front of the army; the Americans pretended at 
first to be very much elated at this mark of distinction, and 
boasted what mighty feats they would do upon the scene of 
action; however, when the moment came to put in execution 
this boasted courage, behold, every one of them ran from the 
front to the rear of the army, with as much expedition as their 
feet could carry them, and threatened to go off entirely, if the 
commander offered to make them a shield to protect the Bri- 
tish soldiers at the expense of their blood; they did not under- 
stand such usage. Sir Peter finding what egregious cowards 
they were, and knowing of what importance such numbers 
would be to intimidate the French by their appearance, told 
these American heroes^ that his orders had been misunderstood, 
that he always intended to keep them in the rear of the army 
to make the great push; that it was the custom of generals to 
preserve the best troops to the last; that this was also the 
Roman custom, and as the Americans resembled the Romans 
in every thing, particularly in courage and a love to their 
country, he should make no scruple of following the Roman 



PEACE OP 1763. 191 

custom, and he made no doubt but the modern Romans would SECT. VI. 
show acts of bravery equal to any in ancient Rome. By such ^^-^-^^-^^ 
discourses as these, said Sir Peter Warren, I made shift to 
keep them with us, though I look care they should be pushed 
forward in no dangerous conflict. Now, I can tell the noble 
Lord, that (his is exactly the situation of all the heroes in 
J\orth America; they are all Romans. And are those men to 
fright us from the post of honour.' Believe me, my lords, the 
very sound of a cannon would carry them off, in Sir Peter's 
words, as fast as their feet could carry them."* 

Although a majority of the noble lords chuckled at the wag- 
gery of the British commodore, and the vis coniica of the head 
of the Admiralty, there was, as the above-mentioned protest 
teaches, a small minority of the assembly, who neither relished 
the joke, nor comprehended the manliness of this course of 
argument in favour of the proscription of a whole people. A 
generous indignation at the language held in the House of 
Commons, roused several of the members of that body, to 
stem the torrent of opprobrium, and I should commit an in- 
justice, if I did not repeat something of what was uttered on 
the American side. 

" Col. Barre said — the Americans had been called cow- 
ards, but the very regiment of foot which behaved so gallantly 
at Bunkers-hill, (an engagement that smacked more of defeat 
than victory) the very corps that broke the whole French co- 
lumn and threw them in such disorder at the siege of Quebec, 
was three parts composed of these cowards."! Governor 
Johnstone paid the following tribute: " To a mind that loves 
to contemplate the glorious spirit of freedom, no spectacle can 
be more affecting than the action at Bunkers-hill. To see an 
irregular peasantry commanded by a physician; inferior in 
numbers; opposed by every circumstance of cannon and bombs 
that could terrify timid minds, calmly waiting the attack of 
the gallant Howe, leading on the best troops in the world, with 
an excellent train of artillery, and twice repulsing those very 
troops who had often chased the battalions of France, and at 
last retiring for want of ammunition, but in so respectable a 
manner that they were not even pursued — Who can reflect on 
such scenes and not adore the constitution of government 
which could breed such men !"| 

The pusillanimity of the provincials served as an enliven- 
ing topic for the circles of fashion, and the clubs of the coffee 

* Debate, March 15th, 1775. i Ibid.— See. Note M, 

t Debate, October 26th, 1775. 



192 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

PART 1. houses, as well as for the august body of parliament. Accord- 
■^^-v^^ ing to Franklin,* " every man in England, in the year 1767, 
seemed to consider himself as a piece of a sovereign over 
America; seemed to jostle himself into the throne with the 
king, and talked of our subjects in the colonies.'''' In 1775, 
almost every man in England thought himself able to conquer 
America, and talked, in the words of the ministry, of the pali- 
node which the dastardly Ameri<;ans would sing, at the very 
appearance of a single British regiment. The English news- 
papers of the day bear me out in this representation; and 
Franklin has left on record, in one of his letters,* a piece of 
concurrent testimony sufficiently pointed. It is to be insert- 
ed here, not merely for the sake of the historical fact, but for 
the concluding observations, which I wish to be taken as a 
commentary, upon all that I have quoted on this head from 
the British orators. 

" The word general puts me in mind of a general, your 
general Clarke, who had the folly to say, in my hearing, at 
Sir John Pringle's, that with a thousand British grenadiers, he 
would undertake to go from one end of America to the other, 
and geld all the males, partly by force and partly by a little 
coaxing. It is j)lain he took us for a species of animals very 
little superior to brutes. The parliament too believed the 
stories of another foolish general, I forget his name, that the 
Yankees never felt bold. 

" Yankey was understood to be a sort of Yahoo, and the 
parliament did not think that the petitions of suth creatures 
were fit to be received and read in so wise an assembly. What 
was the consequence of this monstrous pride and insolence? 
You first sent small armies to subdue us, believing them more 
than sufficient, but soon found yourselves obliged to send 
greater; these, whenever they ventured to penetrate our coun- 
try beyond the protection of their ships, were either repulsed 
and obliged to scamper out, or were surrounded, beaten, and 
taken prisoners. An American planter, who had never seen 
Europe, was chosen by us to command our troops, and con- 
tinued during the whole war. This man sent home to you, 
one after another, five of your best generals baffled, their heads 
bare of la-urels, disgraced even in the opinion of their em- 
ployers. Your contempt of our understandings, in compari- 
son with your own, appeared to be not much better founded 
than that of our courage, if we may judge by this circum- 

* Letter to Lord Karnes. London, April 11th, 1767. 
t August 19th, 1784 



PEACE OP 1763. 193 

stance, that in whatever court of Europe a Yankey negociator sect. vi. 
appeared, the wise British minister was routed, put in a pas- ^•^'^^''^^ 
sion, picked a quarrel with your friends, and was sent home 
with a flea in his ear." 

5. The extreme of acrimony, nay ferociousness, into which 
the temper of the ministerial party towards the colonies had 
run in England, before the declaration of independence, and 
even within three or four years after the peace of Paris, is 
scarcely conceivable on a review of the many circumstances 
which tended, with such weight of reason, and force of pa- 
thos, to produce the opposite state of mind. We have seen 
that, from a mere calculation of interest, or from party-aims, 
the restoration of Canada was proposed, at the very moment, 
of the consummation of the common efforts of the mother coun- 
try and the colonies in the struggle with France. When the co- 
lonies had barely ventured to denounce the stamp-act, the idea 
of a more direct check, of vindictive visitation by similar means, 
was admitted and inculcated. Franklin, writing from London 
in 1768, tells his correspondent, " I can assure you, that here 
are not wanting people, not now in the ministry, but that sooa 
may be, who, if they were ministers, would take no step to 
prevent an Indian war in the colonies; being of opinion, which 
they express openly, that it would be a very good thing, in the 
first place, to chastise the colonists for their undutifulness, and 
then to make them sensible of the necessity of protection by 
the troops of this country." 

We read in the history of Gordon, where he treats of the 
discussions in parliament respecting the repeal of the stamp- 
act, that " the Dukes of York and Cumberland, the Lords of 
the Bed Chamber, and the officers of the royal household, 
were for carrying fire and sword to America, rather than re- 
cal the obnoxious act; and that the bench of bishops joined 
them."* The unnatural rancour which dictated this fell policy, 
could readily tolerate that of starving the provinces of New 
England, by cutting them off" from the fishery on their own 
coast. In extenuation of this measure, and in answer to the 
objections of the opposition in parliament, who, with the mi- 
nistry, believed it might produce famine, the Solicitor General 
of Scotland, a ministerial oracle, said, " that though prevent-^ 
ed from fishing in the sea, the New Englanders had fish in 
their rivers, to which this act did not prevent them from re- 
sorting; and that, though he understood their country was not 

* Vol.ii. p. 139. 

Vol. I.— B b 



194 



DJSfOSITlUJMS FROM THE 



PART I. tit tor grain, yet they had a grain of their own, Indian corn, 
^'^*~*^"^*' on which theif might subsist full as well as they deserved^* 

When such language was held on a question of this nature, 
it is not matter of surprise that, in the same year, the majority 
in parliament listened, not merely without shuddering, but 
with complacency, to the significative intimation already no- 
ticed, of one of its members. Governor Lyttleton, respecting 
the seduction of the American negroes. 

The consoling image of a servile war in the southern colo- 
nies, had even become familiar, to the meditations of the politi- 
cians, and was Industriously presented to the nation. " If the 
obstinacy of the Americans continues without actual hostili- 
ties," said Dr. Johnson, in his Taxation no Tyranny, " it may 
perhaps be mollified by turning out the soldiers to free quarters, 
ibrbidding any personal cruelty or hurt. It has been proposed, 
that ihe slaves should be set free, an act which surely the lovers 
of liberty cannot but commend. If they are furnished with 
fire-arms, for defence^ and utensils for husbandry, and settled 
in some simple form of government within the country, they 
may be more grateful and honest than their masters."! 

The Governors of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Florida, in 
carrying this plan into effect, forgot the utensils of husbandry, 
but not the fire-arms; and offered them to the negroes, to be 
used not strictly for personal defence, but in defence of their 
sovereign! The ministry upheld, in the House of Commons, 
Lord Dunmore's celebrated proclamation of the 7th Nov. 
1'775, of which the following passage is hardly yet effaced 
from the memory of the Virginians. " I do declare all indent- 
ed servants, negroes or others appertaining to rebels, free, that 
are able and willing to bear arms, they joining his majesty's 
troops as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing this 
colony to a proper sense of their duty to his majesty'' s crown and 
dignity.'''' 

Mr. Burke, referring to this subject in his speech on the 
Conciliation with America, made some remarks, the last of 
which may be particularly recommended to the attention of 

* Debate of the Commons, March 6th, 1775. 

t " That this pamphlet (Taxation no Tyranny) was written at the 
desire of tjiose who were then in power, I have no doubt ; and, indeed, 
Johnson owned to me, that it had been revised and curtailed by some 
of them. He told me, that they had struck out one passage, which was 
to this effect: "That the colonists could with no solidity argue from 
their not having been taxed while in their uifancy, that they should not 
now be taxed. We do not put a calf into the plough; we wait till he 
is an ox." He said, "Tliey struck it out either critically as too hidicrouj, 
or politically as too exasperating." (ISosweU.) 



PEACE OF 1763. 195 

those British Clitics, who so often discharge upon us, on account SECT. VI. 
of our slave-holding, " the splendid bile of their virtuous in- *«-^-v-^^ 
diguation." 

"With regard to the high aristocratic spirit of Virginia and 
the southern colonies, it has been proposed, I know, to reduce 
it, by declaring a general enfranchisement of their slaves. 
This project has had its advocates and panegyrists. But I 
could never argue myself into an opinion of it. Slaves as 
these unfortunate black people are, and dull as all men are 
from slavery, must they not a little suspect the offer of free- 
dom from that very nation^ which has sold them to their pre- 
sent masters^ From that nation, one of whose causes of quar- 
rel with those masters, is their refusal to deal any more in that 
inhuman trafficV 

The manifesto and proclamation which the British commis- 
sioners/or restoring peace, addressed to the Americans in Oc- 
tober 1778, denounced a war of havoc, in terms that occasion- 
ed a motion in parliament for solemn reprobation. In the 
course of the animated debate on this motion,* the American 
Congress of that era, — now classed by universal assent, with 
the wisest and most virtuous assemblies of the kind which are 
mentioned in history, — was the particular object of proscrip- 
tion and opprobrium, with members of both parties. Mr. 
Powys said, " if the Congress could be picked up, man by 
man, and put to the most exemplary punishment, they should 
all fall unpitied by him, because they really deserved every 
severity that could be inflicted on them." 

Governor Jo/msfonef " approved of the proclamation through- 
out, and condemned the American Congress in the strongest 
terms. He thought no quarter ought to be shown to them; and 
if the infernals could be let loose against them he should approve 
of the measure. He said, the proclamation certainly did mean 
a war of desolation; it meant nothing else: it could mean no- 
thing else; and if he had been on the spot when it was issued, 
he would have signed it." 

Mr. Attorney General Wedderburn said, " that the procla- 
mation was as sober, conscientious, and humane a piece of 
good writing as he ever saw: he explained away the phrase 
of the ' extremes of war,' and asserted that nothing could be 
done but what was necessary to self preservation, which he 
avowed was a sufficient plea for all the horrors of war." 

* Dec. 4tli, 1778. 

\ His appointment by the ministry as one of the commissioners to 
America, explains the contrariety between his tone at this period, and 
that which he adopted at the beginning of the war. 



196 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

PART I. Mr. Macdonald " understood the part of the proclamation 
■-^"v-"^ which gave such an alarm, to be nothing more than a warning 
to the rebels not (o expect that lenity in future, which we had 
shown to them during the course of the war, when we looked 
upon them as our fellow subjects, and whom we wished to 
reclaim by the most singular mildness and indulgence. By 
their alliance with France, the natural enemy of our country, 
they had forfeited all right to clemency; they were therefore in 
future to be treated no longer as subjects of Great Britain, but 
as appendages vo the French monarchy, whose interests they 
had preferred to the British: parental fondness should no lon- 
ger sway the breasts of our rulers; war should assume a dif- 
ferent furm from that in w hich it had been conducted from the 
beginning of the rebellion; and the Americans might prepare 
to be treated, not, indeed, like beasts, or savages, but like 
common enemies, for whom we no longer retained any trace 
of atfection, which their unnatural alliance had absolutely 
effaced, but which had subsisted longer than it could have 
prudenily been expected, after the many unprecedented pro- 
vocations they had given Great Britain to take off the ties of 
affection at a much more early period. War now they should 
have in its full vigour; not such an one as they had been all 
along accustomed to, and which had been so tempered with 
peacCy that it scarcely deserved the name of war. This he 
conceived to be the meaning of the words in the proclamation; 
he hoped it would have the desired effect on the rebels; he 
flattered himself that it was a happy omen to see the friends 
of America so alarmed at it; and their terrors he would deem 
the forerunners of that geweral consternation in America, which 
would make the deluded colonists open their eyes before it 
should be too late, and return to their allegiance to the mother 
country." 

6. There is still a sort of incredulity of the imagination when 
we reflect, how soon the parent state resorted to the expedient 
of annoyance — the last which, in the order of penal visitation, 
would present itself to the fiercest hate against the most de- 
testable object, or to the most just revenge for the deepest and 
bitterest injury. It will be at once understood that I mean 
the employment of the savages as auxiliaries; an enormity of 
rancour and desperate ambition, which drew down those 
blasting thunders from the genius of Chatham, that seem to be 
still heard, when we look at the faint image of them conveyed 
in the parliamentary history. Two years after the commence- 
ment of the revolution, had this prophetic and generous spirit 



PEACE OF 1763. 197 

Xo tell his countrymen, in an agony of ghame and grief, " It is SECT. VI. 
not a wild and lawless banditli whom we oppose: — the resist- ^--*^v-^^ 
ance of America is the struggle of free and virtuous patriots." 
The cruelty and degeneracy of associating to the British arms 
the tomahawk and scalping-knife — of " trafficking at the 
shambles of every German despot" for the purpose of crush- 
ing that resistance; of butchering a people chiefly descended 
from British loins, and from whose labours Britain had reap- 
ed so rich a harvest of power and glory, might well produce 
the " sanctified phrenzy" to which he was wrought. But he 
recollected, besides, how long that people had struggled with 
" the merciless Indian" for the possession of the soil, on 
which they had reared English communities and institutions; 
and he felt, in seeing the same inveterate enemy led back 
upon them, by the country for whose benefit nearly as much 
as their own, they had fought so bravely, and bled so pro- 
fusely, the peculiar hardship and bitterness of their lot, and 
the unparalleled barbarity and callousness of England. There 
was enough to rouse all the energies of his humanity and his 
patriotism, in the item which the treasury accounts presented, 
of i' 160,000 sterling, for the purchase of warlike accoutre- 
ments for the savages; — in that phrase, as ridiculous as it was 
ferocious, of Bourgoyne's speech to the congress of Indians at 
the river Bouquet (June 21st, 1777) — "Go forth in the 
might of your valour and your cause; strike at the common 
enemies of Great Britain and America, disturbers of public 
order, peace, and happiness; destroyers of commerce; parri- 
cides of the state;" — and in the proclamation of governor 
Tonyn of East Florida, offering a reward for every American 
scalp delivered to persons appointed to receive them. 

It is an aggravation of guilt that the utmost eiforts of the 
highest degree of human eloquence, seconded by the most ma- 
ture wisdom and approved patriotism, were wholly without 
effect. Throughout the war, the mother country displayed as 
haughty and ruthless a spirit, as if she were in fact engaged in 
crushing " a wild and lawless banditti," or resisting an here- 
ditary enemy and rival, alien and odious to her by every prin- 
ciple of estrangement and aversion.* The Americans whom 
she made prisoners in the contest, persisting, as they did, in 
rejecting all temptations to enter into her service against their 
country, so far from conciliating kindness by their magnani- 
mity, experienced a more rigorous treatment than the French 
and Spaniards in the same situation. After many hundreds 

* See Note M. 



198 



DISPOSITIONS FROM THIi 



PART I. of them bad languished for several years in a cruel captivity, 
'"'•^"^'^'^^ they petitioned the government iu vain for an equal allowauce 
of provision. The earl of Shelburne atfirmcd in the House of 
Lords, in the debate of December 5th, 1777, that " the 
French officers taken prisoners going to America, had been 
inhumanly treated; but that the American prisoners in Eng- 
land were treated with unprecedented barbarity." 

The American Board of War had a conference with Mr. 
Boudinot, the commissary general of prisoners, at York town, 
on the 21st of December, 1777, and after having carefully ex- 
amined the evidence produced by him, aj^reed upon the fol- 
loiving report: '' That there are about 900 j)rivates, and SOD 
officers prisoners in the city of New York, and about 500 
privates and 50 officers in Philadelphia: — That the privates 
in New lork have been crowded all summer in sugar-houses, 
and the officers boa.ded on Long Island, except about 30, who 
have been confined in the provost guard, and in ;he most loath- 
some jails: — That since the beginning of October all these 
prisonc rs, both officers and privates, have been confined in 
prison ships, or the provost: — That the privates in Philadel- 
phia have been kept in two public jails, and the officers in the 
state house: — That, from the bes'. evidence which the nature 
of the subject will admit of, the geneial allowance of prison- 
ers, at most does not exceed four ounces of meat and as much 
bread (of.en so damaged as not to be eatable) per day, and 
often much less, though the professed allowance is from eight 
to ten ounces: — Thai it has been a common practice with the 
enemy ^ on a prisoner'' s being first captured^ to keep him three ^ 
four, or even five days without a morsel of provisions of any 
kind, and then to tempt him to enlist to save his life: — That 
there are numerous instances of prisoners of war perishing in 
all the ngonics of hunger from their severe treatment: — That 
being generally i(ript of what clothes they have when taken, 
they have suffi;red greatly for the want thereof, during their 
confinement." 

Mr. Burke, in one of his publications of the year 1776, 
sarcastically remarks, " it is undoubtedly some comfort for 
our disappointments and burdens, to insult the few provin- 
cial officers we take, by throwing them with common men 
into a gaol, and some triumph to hold the bold adventurer 
Ethan Allen, in irons in a dungeon in Cornwall." 

This gallant American was taken prisoner, fighting with 
the utmost bravery, in Canada, under the banners of Mont- 
gomery. He was immediately loaded with irons, and trans- 
ported to England, in that condition, on board of a man-of- 



PEACE OF 1763. 199 

war. On some observations being made in the House of sect. vi. 
Lords, by the duke of Richmond, concerning his treatment, ^^^-v-^»^ 
the earl of Sutfollc, one of the ministry, made this reply — 
" The noble duke says, we brought over Ethan Allen in irons 
to this country, but were afraid to try him, lest he should be 
acquitted by an English jury, or that we should not be able 
legally to convict him. I do assure his Grace, that he is 
equally mistaken in both his conjectures; we neither had a 
doubt but we should be able to legally convict him, nor were 
we afraid that an English jury would have acquitted him; 
nor further was it out of any tenderness to the man^ who, I 
maintain, had justly forfeited his life to the offended laws of 
his country. But I will tell his Grace the true motives which 
induced administration to act as they did. We were aware 
that the rebels had lately made a considerable number of pri- 
soners, and we accordingly avoided bringing him to his trial 
from considerations o[ prudence; from a dread of the conse- 
quences of retaliation; not from a doubt of his legal guilt, or 
a fear of his acquittal by an English jury."^ 

The conduct and temper of the ministry in the case of Ethan 
Allen, — which would have been the same in that of Montgo- 
mery, had he fallen into their hands, — deserves to be visited 
with the contrast, which is afforded in such a trait as the fol- 
lowing, related by general Bourgoyne in the House of Com- 
mons, on the 26th of May, 1778. 

" The district of Saratoga is the property of major general 
Scuyler of the American troops; there were large barracks built 
by him which look fire, the day after the British army arrived 
on the ground. General Stuyler had likewise a very good dv/ell- 
ing-house, exceeding large store-houses, great saw-mills, and 
other out buildings, to the value altogether, perhaps, of 10,000/. 
a few days before the negotiation with general Gates, the enemy 
had formed a plan to attack me; a large column of troops were 
approaching to pass the small river, preparatory to a general 
action, and were entirely covered from the fire of my artil- 
lery by those buildings. Sir, I avow that I gave the order to 
set them on fire; and in a very short time that whole property, 
I have described, was consumed. But, to show that the per- 
son most deeply concerned in thai calamity, did not put the 
construction upon it, which it haa ph ased the honourable gen- 
tleman to do, I must inform the House, that one of the first 
persons I saw, after the convention was signed, was general 
Scuyler. I expressed to him my regret at (he event which 

* 1776. 



200 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

PART r. had happened, and the reasons which had occasioned it. He de- 
^^'"^'■"^ sired me to ihink no more of it; said the occasion justified it, ac- 
cording to the principles and rules of war, and that he should 
have done the same upon the same occasion, or words to that 
effect. He did more — he sent an aid-de-camp to conduct me 
to Albany, in order, as he expressed, to procure me better 
quarters than a stranger might be able to find. This gentle- 
man conducJed me to a very elegant house, and to my great 
surprise, presented me to Mrs. Scuyler and her family; and 
in this general's house I remained during my whole stay at 
Albany, with a table of more than twenty covers for me and 
my friends, and every other possible demonstration of hospi- 
tality." 

7. I do not wish to depreciate the value, or detract from 
the glory, of the exertions made by the great champions of the 
American cause in the British parliament. The Chathams, 
the Camdens, the Shipleys, and the Barres, were animated 
by a love of justice, and a hatred of oppression; and these 
noble sentiments predominated equally, in the breasts of many 
of our less conspicuous friends throughout the British nation. 
But nothing is more certain, than that the opposition, gene- 
rally, to the plans of ministers, had no immediate or princi- 
pal reference to the rights and interests of America. It arose 
out of pre-existing domestic divisions; and the parties mar- 
shalled themselves accordingly, in the new dispute — the tories 
and high churchmen on the side of government; the religious 
dissenters and the assertors of the principles of 1688, in the 
train of the whig-leaders in parliament, candidates for place, 
and invariable antagonists of those in possession. The old 
combat was renewed with fresh fury; the oppression of America 
served as a battery for the minority; while the treasury-bench 
and the dispensers of crown patronage, made use of the pro- 
spect of her subjection — which would open a new exchequer, 
and a new chapter in the red book, — to multiply adherents 
and fortify themselves in power. Doubtless, had they accom- 
plished their object in America, — had their arms and their 
arts been successful in that quarter, with whatever havoc of 
free institutions, and noble lives, and fair creations of manly 
toil — they would have attained all their ends at home, and 
now flourish in British history, as do the Clives and the Hast- 
ings in the annals of the India-House. 

The point is no longer open to controversy, that the ministry 
had a majority of the British people with them in the begin- 



PEACE OF 1763. 201 

ning of the war.* The British nation sanctioned the harshest sect, vl 
measures of coercion through ignorance of the true state of ^-^--v-^-' 
the case, and a blind pride of opinion. By degrees, as her 
agriculture, trade, and manufactures, began to be seriously 
affected by the expenses and embarrassments of the contest, 
the classes dependent upon the prosperity of those branches of 
industry, saw it in a less favourable light; and passing from 
private disagreements and expostulations with the ministry, to 
an open approval of the policy urged by an indefatigable par- 
liamentary opposition, determined the peace and the recogni- 
tion of our independence. Circumstances brought the affair to 
public opinion in the last resort; and that opinion yielded to a 
calculation of profit and loss. No generous sentiment or broad 
political reasoning, mingled itself in fact, or had any sensible 
influence, with the business-like deliberation of its arbiters 
and immediate instruments. There were none at this crisis, 
as there were none at any antecedent period, who " hailed it 
as an extension of British honour and happiness, that great, 
and happy, and independent communities of British descent, 
should exist in America, with the best characteristics of 
British manners and institutions." In parliament, all voices 
proclaimed the emancipation of the colonies as an evil of the 
first magnitude.! The question of our independence had, at 
the outset, to do with the spirit of corruption and tyranny in 

* The testimony of the ministerial party is emphatically positive on 
this point. Lord North said (May 14th, 1777) "he might justly affirm, 
that there was a very great majority of the nation at large, who were 
for prosecuting the war against their rebellious subjects in America, 
till they should acknowledge the legislative supremacy of parliament." 
So, Mr, Jenkinson — (March 17th, 1778) — "All degrees of people arose 
in one unanimous resentment, and the war became a popular war. I 
say this war with America has been a popular war," &c. 

f In the debate of July 10th, 1782, on American Independence, the 
Earl of Shelburne said, — " With respect to America, he had always 
considered her independence as a great evil which Britain had to dread, 
and to guard against. He had spoken of it in this manner for years past, 
and tvhen he believed he was joined in sentiment by every man in the country.. 
He had always believed and declared, that the independence of Ame- 
rica was an evil as much to be apprehended and dreaded by America 
as by Britain! This had always been his opinion; and he had constantly 
laboured, by every means in his power, to persuade men, that this was 
the case, in his applications to private men and to public men, to indivi- 
duals and to bodies of men. He wished to God, that he had been ap- 
pointed to urge that proposition, and to maintain it before congress! 
He was one of the last men in the country vi^ho had been brought over 
to agree that Britain ought to acknowledge the independence of Ame- 
rica ; but circumstances, he confessed, were changed, and he was now 
of opinion that it was become a necessary evil which the country must 
endure to avoid a greater," &c. 

Vol. r— Cc 



202 DISPOSITIONS I'KOM THE 

PART I. the cabinet, and of arrogance and commercial monopoly in the 
^"^-^''""^^ people. In the end, it appeared not merely less dangerous to 
the monopoly than was thought, but even likely to prove the 
reverse. This consideration abated the fierceness and acceler- 
ated the submission, of pride, which had finally, a severer 
struggle, in yielding to France and Spain. The opposition 
leaders who succeeded the authors of the war in the cabinet, 
were carried onward, irresistibly, to the last concession, by the 
principles upon which they mounted to power, and by the 
course of events. As regards the dispositions and personal 
views of the Shelburne administration, the history, now fully 
disclosed, of the negotiations for peace, has left few grounds of 
admiration or gratitude. 

8. It has been said, and it may be (rue, that, notwithstand- 
ing the addition of one hundred millions sterling made to the 
British national debt, the eff'usion of so much blood, the humi- 
liation correlative to the triumph of France and Spain, the 
indelible stains left in the national character, not a few 
of the English politicians finding the trade ivith ^^lerica 
retained^ and even likely to he indefinitely enlarged^ were 
glad, and openly rejoiced, that the struggle with such potent 
colonies, foreseen to be inevitable in progress of time, had 
ended on such easy terms. But it is much more certain 
that with multitudes of all classes, the dismemberment of 
the empire left an ulceration, " a galling wakefulness," 
which found relief only in the most extravagant or malignant 
hopes; and that the experience of the war was lost upon the 
majority of the nation, in regard to the character and destinies 
of the colonies. On the conclusion of peace, it was confidently 
announced and believed, that the confederacy of the States 
would quickly be dissolved; that the forces of Great Britain 
remaining among them, might be called in to quell the disor- 
ders, which the separation from the mother country must pro- 
duce; that a second revolution would happen, and restore 
them, penitent and submissive, to her dominion. Indeed, to 
induce theui to lay their independence at her feet, nothing 
more would soon be necessary, than to hold out the threat, of 
considering and treating them, as a foreign nation in matters 
of trade. The Americans were still cowards, for the Irish had 
fought their battles, as well by sea as by land;* and, at all 

* The modesty of this assertion was the more remarkable from the 
notorious fact, that the Irish iind Scotch troops, and the German merce- 
naries, formed the major part of the force which England employed 



PEACE OF 1763. 20S 

events, if they were not driven by intestine confusion and dis- sect. VI. 
tress, to return to their allegiance, Spain would involve them ^-^"""''^-^ 
in awful difficulties, by the claims she was likely to prefer on 
that part of Louisiana given up by the treaty. 
^ Such were the topics of consolation administered by writers 
of authority, and greedily swallowed by men in office. Lord 
Sheffield embodied them in a pamphlet soon afier the ratifica- 
tion of the definitive treaty, and took, by general consent, the 
station of oracle, which he ought never to lose, so marvel- 
ously have events confirmed all his opinions. I cannot resist 
the temptation of quoting some of the most striking of these, 
as they show the spirit of the times in England. — " It will not 
be an easy matter to bring the American states to act as a na- 
tion; they are not to be feared as such by us." "We might as 
reasonably dread the effects of combinations among the Ger- 
man, as among the American states, and deprecate the resolves 
of the Diet as those of Congress." " Every circumstance 
proves that it will be extreme folly to enter into any engage- 
ments with them, by which we may not wish to be bound here- 
after.''''* " There is not a possibility that America will main- 
tain a navy." " That country concerning which writers of a 
lively imagination have lately said so much, is weakness 
te//"."t " It is not probable the American states will have a 
very free trade in the Mediterranean; it will not be the interest 
of any of the great maritime powers to protect them from the 
Barbary states. They cannot protect themselves from the 
latter; they cannot pretend to a navy."| " The authority of 
the Congress can never be maintained over those distant and 
boundless western regions, and her nominal subjects will 
speedily imitate and multiply the examples of independence. "§ 
"The population of America is not likely to increase as it 
has done, at least on her coast. "|| "There is no country in 
Europe which pays such heavy taxes as the American states,"1I 
&c. 

Looking back to the exasperation and commotions wbi'^h 
were raised in America by the stamp-act, and to the toial 
change of the scene on its repeal, Mr. Btirke made the just 
remark that "so sudden a calm recovered after so violent a 

against the colonies. The ministry conceived the plan of hiring twenty 
thousand Russians besides, to assist in "fighting their battles" on this 
continent. 

* Observations on the Commerce of the United States, 2d edition, 
p. 198. 

t Ibid. p. 206. § Ibid. p. 190. Ij Ibid. p. 193. 

± Ibid. p. 204. I! Ibid. p. 201. 



204 DISFOSITIONS FROM THE 

PART I. storm was without parallel in history." The colonists almost 
'-^"^''^^ universally vied in demonstrations of gratitude, and glowing 
expressions of loyalty, as if the repeal had been a spontaneous 
and inesiimable boon, and not a retraction, produced by party 
interests, of an impolitic usurpation. There was something 
not less remarkable, and admirable, in the transition at the 
conclusion of the revolutionary war. Notwithstanding the 
enormity of the provocations on which the Americans had 
taken up ihe sword, the severity of their sufferings during the 
struggle, and the vindictive and ruthless character of the hos- 
tilities waged against them, the tide of their affections turned 
rai)ldly towards the mother country,* and Ihe policy of re- 
newing with her, the closest and most liberal relations com- 
patible with independence, received the sanction of a large 
majority throughout the confederation. 

Taking the representations of the British writers themselves 
concerning the merits of the dispute so solemnly terminated, 
it is impossible to imagine a case, in which natural duty, re- 
tributive justice, and the common good, more plainly exacted 
from the other side, more even than a mere correspondence ot 
sentiments and views. And yet what a contrast! as proved by 
the vogue of Sheffield's writings and doctrines, and from such 
statements as the following, made in 1784, by his ablest an- 
tagonist.! 

" It is sufficient, at this time, to support an opinion of the 
propriety of endeavouring to restore our broken connexion with 
America, by those conciliatory means, which best fend to re- 
gain the affections of a people, from whom we have derived, 
and from whom we may yet derive, the most solid benefits, to 
be deemed the sacrificers of the interests of Great Britain to 
those of America. However laudable, however necessary the 
pursuit, there is a prejudice among us arising from intemperate 
passion, and the vexation of disappointment, that precludes, 
obstructs, or, in some shape or other, ultimately destroys it." 

It would lead me too far to detail the facls«which have 
rendered unquestionable and notorious, the continued pre- 
valence of those unworthy dispositions, and the steady pro- 
secution of a scheme of action in itself demonstrative of 
their inveteracy. I could produce British authority on this 

* This is not, indeed, the opinion of Judge Marshall (Life of Wash- 
ington, vol. v. p. .)55) ; but it is proved, by the victory gained for the 
politics most favourable to Great Dritain in all respects. 

f Champion — "Considerations on tlie present situation of Great 
Britain," London, Sic. 



PEACE OF 1763. 205 

head, in the shape of direct confessions and self-reproof, sf.CT. VI. 
conveyed in books and parliamentary debates, for every ^.^^v^^/ 
consecutive year from the peace of 1782 to the present time. 
From the abundance of this kind of testimony, I will take, at 
random, some few morsels which no third party at least, will 
reject as invalid, and which shall have relation to periods so 
recent as 1808, and 1812. 

" In England," says Mr. Baring, " our insensible mono- 
poly of the American trade does not appear ever to have been 
properly appreciated: the events of a civil war left naturally 
deeper impressions on the unsuccessful than the successful 
party, and while every little state of Europe was courted, that 
afforded limited markets for our manufactures, we seemed to 
regret that we owed any thing to our former subjects; and an 
increasing commercial intercourse has been carried on under 
feelings of unsubdued enmity, of which the government, instead 
of checking sentiments as void of common sense as of magna- 
nimity, has rather set the fashion. To this error, in my opi- 
nion, the present state of the public mind towards America is 
in a great measure owing. Her success and prosperity, 
though we dare not fairly avow it, have displeased us, and 
sentiments have been imperceptibly encouraged towards her 
as ungenerous as they are impolitic."^ 

" I know," said Mr. Brougham, in parliament, in 1812, 
*' the real or affected contempt with which some persons in 
this country treat our kinsmen of the West. I fear some 
angry and jealous feelings have survived our more intimate 
connexion with them, — feelings engendered by the event of its 
termination, but which, it would be wiser, as well as more 
manly to forget." 

" No small part of the English nation," says the Edinburgh 
Review, " look with feelings of peculiar hostility towards the 
people to which (hey bear the nearest resemblance, and wil- 
lingly abet their rulers in treating them with less respect and 
less cordiality than any other nation. Neither the government 
nor the populace of this country have forgiven America for 
having made herself independent; and the lowest calumnies and 
grossest abuse are daily employed by a court-faction to keep 
alive the most vulgar prejudices.— (No. 23. 1809.) " The 
Americans asserted their independence upon principles which 
they derived from us. — Their rebellion was the surest proof 
of their genuine descent. They are descended from our loins 

* Inquiry into the Causes and Consequences of the Orders in Coun- 
cil. 1808. p. 19. 



206 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

PART I. — they retain our usages and ntianners — they read our books— 

^■■^^^^^^i^ they have copied our freedom — they rival our courage — and 

yet they are less popular and less esteemed among us than the 

base and bigoted Portuguese, and the ferocious and ignorant 

Russians." 

" There is not an individual who has attended at ail to the 
progress of the present dispute with America, (1812) who 
does not see that it was embittered from the first, and wantonly 
urged to its present fatal issue, by the insolent, petulant, and 
preposterous tone of those very individuals who insisted upon 
that miserable experiment — and plunged their own country in 
wretchedness, only to bring down upon it the reluctant hos- 
tility of its best customers and allies," &c. 

9. The reign of Lord Sheffield's sapient opinions, was natu- 
rally prolonged in Great Britain, by the comparative insignifi- 
cance of the military and naval establishments of the United 
States under the federal administration; their total disarray 
after its overthrow; the simplicity of their institutions, and the 
vehement altercations of the parties into which they were 
thrown. It became anew a common belief and fond hope 
with the ministerial politicians, that America might yet be re- 
gained by arms or by arts; and even those of the opposition 
settled down in a contemptuous commiseration of her weak- 
ness and sinister destinies. The rencontre of the Chesapeake 
and Leopard made it quite certain, for all parties, that the 
Americans were cowards; that the Irish had fought their 
battles in the revolution; and that there was only food for mer- 
riment or pity in the idea of their meeting, at sea, British 
skill and valour. The Edinburgh Review told confidently 
of " the feeble and shadowy texture of the federal govern- 
ment;"* — it had " little hopes of a system of polity which, in 
an advancing society, offered no prizes to talents, and no dis- 
tinctions to wealth;"! and foresaw that " the slender tie which 
held the United States together would burst at once in the 
tumult of war. "I In 1809, the same journal, professing 
always superior liberality and closeness of observation, as to 
our affairs, discoursed of us in the following strain: " As it is 
quite impossible to have too much jealousy of France, so, to- 
wards America we can scarcely have too little. When such 
reasoners as Mr. Leckie, gravely talk of our being insulted 
by the Porte, we plainly perceive the errors of a man who 
^ has lived in the immediate neighbourhood of the Turks, until 

" No. 28. t Ibid. i No. 24. 



PEACE OP 1763. 207 

he has forgotten their insignificance. But when France is SECT.vi. 
stretching her iron coasts on all sides of us, — when her fleets v-<^</''«iii-/ 
and her camps are within sight — and we alone, of all Europe, 
have not been conquered by her arms; — it is almost as ridicu- 
lous to be jealous of America as of Turkey — of a nation three 
thousand miles off — scarcely kept together by the weakest 
government in the world, — with no army, and half a dozen 
frigates — and knowing no other means of intercourse with 
other countries than by peaceful commerce."* 

In 1812, Mr. Brougham struck the same key in parliament, 
and displayed an equal mastery of his subject. 

" Jealousy of America! whose armies are yet at the plough, 
or making, since your policy has willed it so, awkward 
(though improving) attempts at the loom — whose assembled na- 
vies could not lay siege to an English sloop of war: — Jealousy 
of a power which is necessarily peaceful as well as weak, but 
which, if it had all the ambition of France and her armies to 
back it, and all the navy of England to boot, nay, had it the 
lust of conquest which marks your enemy, and your armies 
as well as navy to gratify it — is placed at so vast a distance 
as to be perfectly harmless! and this is the nation, of which, 
for our honour's sake, we are desired to cherish a perpetual 
jealousy, for the ruin of our best interests."! 

The Quarterly Review scarcely deigned even to pass a jest 
upon the impotency of the states, and would not " stoop to de- 
grade the British navy by condescending to enter into any 
comparison between the high order, the discipline, and com- 
fort, of an English man-of-war, and an Jlmerican frigate;^'' 
it " disdained any such comparison. "| This high disdain of 
all the belligerant capacities of America pervaded, not only 
the royal councils, but the whole British naval and military 
service. In the first rencontre at sea, the Alert, with 20 guns 
mounted, bore down triumphantly upon the American frigate 
Essex, and fired a broadside, expecting to prove that " the 
assembled navies of America could not lay siege to an Eng- 
lish sloop of war:" and though the issue gave an air of para- 
logy to the business, yet it was soon followed by an instance of 
the same happy confidence in the case of the frigate Guerriere. 

I must do the two oracular journals which I have quoted on 
this head, the justice to remark, that, at the end of the con- 
test, although they omitted to remind their readers of their 

* No. 24. y 

f Speech on the present state of Commerce and Manufactures. 
t No 15. Article on Madison's War. 



20b DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 

PART I. first opiiiiony, they did not pass by the perplexing facts in ab- 
^•i^'"^''^*w/ solute silence. The Quarterly Review could condescend to 
say, " The Americans have fought on the element of Eng- 
land with British spirit. On that element, let it be fairly ac- 
knowledged, we have much to commend in ihem, andioe/mve 
still something to redeemP''^ Even before the termination of 
hostilities, the Edinburgh Review told of " the discomfiture 
of the English naval resources by the American marine, of 
which, by a whimsical coincidence, we have learnt the ex- 
istence in the same documents that detail its successes." And 
speedily came out the round, unvarnished tale: 

" We have been worsted in most of our naval encounters 
with the Americans, and baffled in most of our enterprises by 
land — with a naval force on their coast, exceeding that of the 
enemy in the proportion of ten to one, we have lost two out of 
three, of all the sea-fights in which we have been engaged — 
and at least three times as many men as our opponent; while 
their privateers swarm unchecked round all our settlements, 
and even on the coast of Europe, and have already made prize 
of more than seventeen hundred of our merchant vessels."! 

It is true, and detracts a little from the force of these ac- 
knowledgments, that we read in the same number of the Jour- 
nal — " the national vanity of the Americans has scarcely any 
other field of triumph than the discomfiture of Britain in the 
war of the Revolution." We might produce, by way of re- 
joinder, perhaps, from the same hand, out of a number of 
passages implying the existence of other fields of triumph, the 
following: 

" History has no other example of so happy an issue to a 
revolution consummated by a long civil war, as that of the 
Americans. Indeed, it seems to be very near a maxim in 
political philosophy, that a free government cannot be obtain- 
ed, where a long employment of military force is necessary to 
establish it. In the case of America, however, the military 
power was disarmed by that very influence which makes a 
revolutionary army so formidable to liberty; for the images of 
grandeur and power — those meteor lights, which are exhaled 
in the stormy atmosphere of a revolution, to allure the ambi- 
tious and dazzle the weak — made no impression upon the 
firm and virtuous soul of the American commander."^ 

" In the United States, M. Talleyrand was surprised to 
observe, that a long and violent civil war had left scarcely any 
trace of its existence in the character of the intercourse of 

' No. 30. t No. 48. i. No. 25. 



PEACE OF 1763. 209 

the various factions which divided the people. No hatred or SECT. VI. 
animosity was perceivable among individuals; no turbulence '^^-v-^ 
or agitation of character had been permanently engrafted on 
the sober, solid habits of the colonists. The profound re- 
mark of Machiavel appeared for once to fail, (hat every revo- 
lution contains the seeds of another, and scatters them behind 
it."* ^ 

" The spemcle presented by America during the last thirty 
or forty years, ever since her emancipation began to produce 
'tis full effect, and since she fairly entered the lists as an in- 
dependent nation — has been, beyond every thing formerly 
known in the history of mankind, imposing and instructive."! 

Dr. Seybert has introduced into his Statistics a compendious 
statement of the naval events of the war, which furnishes an 
edifying commentary upon the first speculations of the British 
politicians. 

" The American navy triumphed in fourteen engagements, 
in some of which, the contending forces were nearly equal, 
and in many of them that of the enemy was decidedly supe- 
rior. The cases of the Chesapeake and the Argus are the only 
instances in which it can be pretended that the enemy had any 
fair claims to success, upon the ground of the equality of the 
respective forces. 

" The superiority of our gunnery is confirmed by the num- 
ber of killed and wounded on board the enemy's vessels, and 
the condition of their ships after the actions; in several in- 
stances the British vessels were sunk whilst the fight lasted: 
in most instances they were so materially injured as to make 
their destruction absolutely necessary; whereas our vessels 
were commonly, with scarcely any loss of time, ready to com- 
mence another combat." 

The number of British merchant vessels captured by the 
Americans, and which arrived in port or were destroyed, is 
determined, by an irrefragable estimate,:}: to amount to five 
thousand five hundred; more, in all probability, than Britain 
lost in all the wars which grew out of the French revolution. 

Much clamour, it may be recollected, was raised in England, 
concerning the real amount of force of the American ships, 
compared with the nominal. But we may judge with what 
grace this charge was so indignantly made, by the following 
statement which I copy from the Regulations relative to the 
Royal Navy, officially promulgated in 1817. 



* No. 11. -J- No. 59. 

i See that very useful work— Niles' Weekly Register, for Jan. 1816, 

Vol. I.— D d 



210 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE, &C. 

PART I. " All ships of the second rate, though rated at 98, carry 
v^*-^-"^-/ upwards oi" 100 guns. 

"• In the thh'd rate, some of the ships rated at 80 guns. 
carry near 90, and others rated at 74, carry 80 guns. 

" In the fourth rate, of the ships rated at 50 guns, one class 
(that on two decks) carries 58 guns; another (that on one deck) 
carries 60 and upwards, ^ 

"The frigates rated at 40 guns, carry 50; and those rated 
at 38, carry 46 and upwards. 

" The majority of those rated at 36, carry 44; and some of 
those rated at 32, carry 46 and 48; being more than others 
that arc rated at 38 and 36, 

" Similar differences between the real and the nominal 
amount of force exists in the fifth rate, but it is unnecessary to 
specify the details." 

In the article on Michaud's Travels in America, our friends 
of the Edinburgh Review remarked of the western Ameri- 
cans, with a mixture of contempt and compassion — "their 
generals distil brandy, their colonels keep tavern, and their 
statesmen feed pigs." But it was discovered, by the progress 
of events, that these generals and colonels could, notwith- 
standing, pursue the occupation implied by their titles; and the 
affairs of Plattsburg and New Orleans confounded the critics. 
"We have actually had to witness the incredible spectacle of 
a regular well appointed army of British veterans, retiring be- 
fore little more than an equal force of American militia!" 

The whole result of the war on the land, to which the gene- 
rals that distil brandy, and the colonels that feed pigs, largely 
contributed, must have astonished them still more. An aggre- 
gate loss of nearly twelve thousand of his majesty's troops, 
and the inefficiency of a force of fifty thousand regulars ope- 
rating at one time! And, with respect to the statesmen who feed 
pigs^ there must have been a lively surprise, and some altera- 
tion of sentiment, when the Marquis Wellesley was found 
declaring in the House of Lords, that, "in his opinion, the 
American Commissioners at Ghent had shown the most asto- 
nishing superiority over the British during the whole of the 
correspondence; and that he had little doubt the British papers 
were communicated from the common fund of the ministers 
m England."* 

* Speech respecting the Negociation for Peace with America, April 
18th, 1815. 



2U 



SECTION VII. 



OF THE HOSTILITIES OF THE BRITISH REVIEWS. 

1. After the Revolution of 1688, and still more after the SEC.Vir. 
establishment of the House of Hanover, the North American s^'^^"^^'^ 
Colonies preferred titles of a peculiar force, to the highest 
esteem and favour of every Briton, who respected and loved 
the principles, with which those events were connected. They 
had been obnoxious to the despotic plans of the Stuarts, and 
suffered from their tyranny; they had asserted the rights pro- 
claimed in Magna Charta, with more boldness, and maintain- 
ed them with more success, than the mother country; they 
had limited the ravages, and disappointed the voracity, of des- 
potism and corruption, by furnishing a secure asylum for the 
persecuted, as well as the distressed from whatever cause.* 
On these grounds, and the many others developed in the fore- 
going pages, their merits might be supposed to be almost in- 
finite with every English whig of the last fifty years; so great, 
at least, as to make it, for one of the present day, not only a 
perversion of natural feeling, but a political apostacy, to treat 
of their character and concerns, except upon a system of the 
utmost liberality and indulgence. Chatham and Charles 
Fox had given them an irresistible claim to his gratitude and 
respect, in ascribing to their revolt the salvation of the British 
Constitution. " The resistance of the Americans to the op- 
pressions of the mother country," said the last of those cano- 
nized statesmen, in the House of Commons, " has undoubt- 
edly preserved the liberties of mankind." 

Our revolution, in its motive, conduct, and conclusion, 
united in its favour the suffrages of the most enlightened por- 
tion of continental Europe; and there has been of late years 
hardly an individual in England, holding a certain rank in the 
literary or political world, who has ventured, directly to deny 
it, the most exalted characteristics. The writers of ibe Quar- 
terly Review have, indeed, seemed to refuse it all the felicity 
with which it had been invested by others, in asserting that, 
" when America became independent, she had no race of edu- 

* See note N. 



312 HOSTILITIES OF THE 

PART I. cated men to fill the situations which used to be respected,"* 
v-^">^>*^ but even they, the official guardians of tory principles, preju- 
dices, and interests, have yielded to it a tribute oF no trifling 
import. "The anglo- Americans, an active and enlightened 
people, animated by the spirit and information derived from 
their mother country, contended, as they had done in the pre- 
ceding century, vvilh pertinacious zeal, for a civil right, the 
grant of which, in the early part of the contest, might have 
restored their tranquillity and preserved their allegiance. 
Happily for them, their patriots were not atheists, nor their 
leaders robbers; their men of property, education^ and morals, 
took the lead, and the physical power of the poor and the 
profligate was not set up to plunder, to expatriate,"! &c. There 
is here enough of positive and negative praise, to induce us to 
impute the declaration first quoted, to an honest belief that all our 
educated men had perished in the course of the revolution! 

The North American settlements presented, from their 
commencement, what was pre-eminently calculated to en- 
gage the affections, and kindle the benevolence, of the Chris- 
tian and the philanthropist, in the rapid and extensive con- 
quests made on the wilderness, for religion and civilization. 
Clothing the desert with beauty and reclaiming it to fruitful- 
ness; enlarging indefinitely the boundaries of polished nature, 
and opening the way for the existence of millions of freemen 
of the English race over one of the most favoured portions of 
the earth, were achievements which, with all their dignity and 
value, did not more powerfully recommend our American fore- 
fathers to the favour and protection of the good and the wise, 
than the motives from which they were undertaken, and the 
manner in which they were performed. " There was no cor- 
ner of the globe," exclaimed Chatham, " to which the ances- 
tors of our fellow subjects in America, would not have fled, 
rather than submit to the slavish and tyrannical spirit which 
prevailed in their native country." Of such men, no Eng- 
lishman boasting of his attachment to the present theory of 
the British constitution, should, to be consistent, think or 
speak without a glow of admiration. And we, their suc- 
cessors, whose spirit, as far at least as liberty is concerned, 
cannot be said to have degenerated from theirs; who have 
preserved their institutions, and continued their labours, so 
as, with similar dangers and toils, to bring under the dominion 
of Christianity and civilized art, regions immense beyond the 

* No. 4. Article on Holmes' American Annals. 
7 Article on Spain and her colonies. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 



213 



grasp of their imagination — we, constituting now a republic SEC. VH. 

of " ten millions of British freemen, who may be numbered '-^^v^^ 

among the most intelligent, the most moral, the bravest, and 

the most happy, of the human race"*' — might well expect, as ^ 

we deserve, to find in the philosophers and whigs of the mother 

country, even though of the class of critics by profession, not 

scoffers and delracfers, but earnest friends and panegyrists. 

The Scottish tribunal that sits in constant judgment over us, 

by virtue of a mysterious authority, seems to have been aware 

of our claims in some of the respects upon which I have 

touched. Such language as the following, from the thirteenth 

number of the Edinburgh Review, is in unison with reason 

and true sentiment, and will make the reproach double, if we 

should find those who uttered it, acting in contradiction to its 

spirit. 

"This immense sphere of activity in America, is the crea- 
tion of yesterday. Even Mr. Ashe, disposed as he is to decry 
every thing American, is obliged to admit, that she displays, 
in the wonders of her growing industry, a picture at once 
striking and exhilarating. It is impossible to contemplate such 
a scene without exulting in the triumphs of industry. This 
peaceful power is here subduing regions of growing forests, 
which conquering armies would fear to enter; and extending, 
with silent rapidity, the limits of civilized existence. We 
cannot help wishing that our countrymen, in general, were a 
little more alive to the feelings which we conceive such a spec- 
tacle is calculated to excite; and that they could be brought to 
sympathize a little more in the progress of a kindred people, 
destined to carry our language, our arts, and our interests too, 
over regions more vast than ever acknowledged the sway of 
the Caesars of Rome." 

Notwithstanding this just and obvious view of the case; the 
commercial obligations of which I have treated; and all the 
ingratiating points of our history, with which the better in- 
formed among the British writers cannot be supposed to be 
unacquainted, the United States have invariably experienced 
from them more obloquy and ridicule, than the nations of the 
European continent, the farthest removed from Great Britain 
in their origin, institutions, policy, knowledge, and moral 
qualities. There has been no period since our revolution at 
which a liberal Briton, looking to the comparative treatment 
of the Americans, in the British books and parliamentary dis- 

• Sir James Mackintosh. Speech on the Treaty with America, April 
11th, 1815. 



314 HOSTILITIES OF THE 

PART I. cussions, might not have repeated what Mr. Burke indignantly 
s^'^'-^»»' uttered in 1775 — "The faults which grow out of the luxuriance 
of freedom, appear much more shocking to us, than the base 
vices which are generated in the rankness of servitude." The 
periodical publications have served as constant emunctories 
for those humours, respecting the diffusiveness and virulence 
of which, I have already produced adequate testimony. It is 
to the language and temper, of some of the most important of 
those publications, that I mean to direct my attention at pre- 
sent. I propose to fill up this Section with quotations of their 
invidious suggestions, and with cursory observations upon such 
of these as seem to call for immediate notice. 

2. The Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, — confessedly 
at the head of all publications of the kind in the world, and 
works of great authority wherever letters are cultivated, — 
have taken the lead in the war of defamation and derision, 
against the American people and institutions. They have, 
indeed, carried opposite ensigns, and made their attacks in 
modes somewhat dissimilar. The hostilities of the English 
critics have been more direct and coarse, and accompanied 
with fewer professions of moderation and good will; those of 
the Scottish, having been waged, almost always with protesta- 
tions of friendship, and at times with the affectation of a for- 
mal defence of the object. When the one has said,* — " pro- 
fessing ourselves among the number of persons who experience 
no very particidar degree of affection for our transatlantic 
brethren;'''' and the other — " the Americans are not liked in this 
country, and we are not now going to recommend them as ob- 
jects of our love; "we are no admirers of the Americans ;"f 

* Quarterly. No. 24. 

f The pliani Bosvvell set the example to his countrymen, of this form 
of speech, adding, however, a maxim which tliey seem to have over- 
looked. " Weil do you know that I have no kindness for tiie Bosto- 
nians. But nations or bodies of men should, as well as individuals, 
have a fair trial, and not be condemned on character alone." (Letter to 
Dr. Johnson, Jan. 27, 17/5). The Quarterly Review has preferred the 
more energetic spirit and sousing manner of the Dr. himself; of which 
H sample is afforded in the following passage of his Blograpliy. "From a 
pleasing subject," says Boswell, "he (Ur. Johnson) 1 know not how or 
why, made a sudden transition to one upon which he was a violent 
aggressor; for he said, "I am willing to love all mankind, exce/ii aw 
American .•" and his inflammable corruption bursting into horrid fire, 
iie "breathed out threatenings and slaughter;" calling them, "Rascals 
— Robbers — Pirates;" and exclaiming, he'd "burn and destroy them." 
Miss Seward, looking to him with mild but steady astonishment, said, 
" Sir, this is an instance that we are always most violent against those 



' BRITISH REVIEWS. 215 

they approached near enough in language to betray the iden- sec. vii. 
lity of their spirit. Both have canted about the tender for- v.^'^'-'v^ 
bearance due on the two sides of the Atlantic — ''the sacred 
bond of blood and language ;" '^the endearing communi'y of 
religion and laws ;" " the inheritance of the same principles 
of government and morals ;" "the beauty of the example of 
natural friends among nations, in contradistinction to the too 
readily admitted division of natural enemies," &,c. — and they 
have harped upon these topics, in the sequel of a tissue of the 
bitterest contumelies and sarcasms. But the Edinburgh Re- 
view particularly, has gone farther, with a modesty which is 
truly unrivalled. Whilst uttering the most disparaging opi- 
nions, and discharging vollies of sneers, it has inveighed fiercely 
against " the bitter sneering at every thing in America" by 
the ministerial writers: reproached them for their insolent, 
petulant and preposterous tone; wondered profoundly at the 
little cordiality and respect for America among the British 
nation; and seemed to take to itself vast credit for the con- 
trary dispositions. 

Recently, it has furnished an instance of this manoeuvre, 
which outstrips all competition, and has the air of a wanton 
mockery of the understandings of its readers, as much as of a 
device of party-strategy. In the body of that article of the 
61st number, which contains the heaviest denunciations, and 
some of the most flippant undersaying, ever directed against 
this country, we read the following phrases, the first of vvliich 
is, by the way, a fine specimen of purism in style. " Among 
other faults with which the present English government is 
chargeable, the vice of impertinence has lately crept into our 
Cabinet; and the Americans have been treated with ridicule 
and contempt." " We wish well to America; we rejoice in 
her prosperity, and are delighted to resist the absurd iuiperti- 
nence with which the character of her people is often treated in 
this country^ but," &c. 

I have already given, in the quotations which I have made, 
some evidence of the validity of ihese pretensions, and of the 
temper and consistency of ihe Quarterly Review. But we 
have not, perhaps, had enough exactly to determine, the degree 
of authority to which the two bands of crii.ics are respectively 
entitled, in their judgments concerning A-nerica; whether on 
the score of liberality in their feelings, gravity in their deli- 
berations, or steadiness in iheir opinions I will, therefore, 

whom vvc have injured." — He was irritated still more by this dclcate 
and keen reproach ; and roared out anothfer tremendous voiley, which 
one might fancy could be heard across the Atlantic. " (Vol. ii. p. 12.) 



316 HOSTILITIES OP THE 

PART I. look back upon the complexion of the articles which they 
^«^'^^">>»' have devoted to us, pursuing the design which 1 have men- 
tioned above. To begin with the Edinburgh critics, those 
friends and patrons by pre-eminence, who have always been 
" delighted to resist the absurd impertinence with which the 
character of America has been treated in Great Britain." 

They condescended to notice this republic directly, for 
the first time, in their fourth number, in the article on Da- 
vis' Travels; and certainly we had some reason to draw 
encouraging presages from their general tone in this outset. 
There were but two passages in the article, which had a sinister 
aspect — one which asserted roundly that habitual drunkenness 
was in no country so prevalent as in the United States — an- 
other concerning Franklin^ as follows: "• It is certain that the 
enlightened part of the American community begin now to 
consider this boasted character in a very ambiguous point of 
view, and to attach much less consequence and veneration to 
his memory than formerly. To him they are certainly in- 
debted for the most important public services, and for his 
strenuous endeavours to introduce among them a taste for 
science and literature; but, on the other hand, his canting 
exhortations to extreme frugality have had their effect in pre- 
venting the expansion of the noblest principles of the mind; and 
his example, in the dereliction of religion^ has certainly lent an 
unfortunate support to the cause of scepticism and infidelity.^'' 

I should be unjust not to acknowledge that full amends were 
made, at the same tribunal, to the memory of this '' boasted 
character," in two copious articles, devoted entirely to his 
panegyric, and producing one of those remarkable antinomies 
in its decisions, which fall within the scope of the present 
exposition. A few extracts will be sufficient for the intelli- 
gence of the case. 

" Dr. Franklin, the self taught American, is the most ra- 
tional, perhaps, of all philosophers. No individual ever pos- 
sessed a juster understanding. In much of what relates to 
the practical wisdom and happiness of life, his views will be 
found to be admirable, and the reasoning by which they are 
supported most masterly and convincing. Upon the mechanics 
and tradesmen of Boston and Philadelphia, he endeavoured, with 
appropriate eloquence, to impress the importance of industry, 
sobriety and economy, and to direct their wise and humble 
ambition to the attainment of useful knowledge and honour- 
able independence. Nothing can be more perfectly and beau- 
tifully adapted to its object than Dr. Franklin's compositions 
of this sort. The strong sense, clear information, and obvious 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 217 

comidion of the author himself, make most of his moral SEC. vil. 
exhortations perfect models of popular eloquence, &c.^*We ^--*»^v-'fc^ 
should think his account of his own life a very useful reading 
for all young persons of unsteady principle, who have their 
fortunes to make or mend in this world."* 

" In one point of view, the name of Franklin must be con- 
sidered as standing higher than any of the others which illus- 
trated the last century. Distinguished as a statesman, he was 
equally great as a philosopher; thus uniting in himself a rare 
degree of excellence in both those pursuits, to excel in either 
of which is deemed the highest praise. Each successive pub- 
lication of this great man's works increases our esteem for 
his virtues, and our admiration of his understanding. We 
can offer the Americans no better advice than to recommend 
to them a constant study of Franklin, of his principles, as 
well as his compositions. The example of this eminent per- 
son teaches that veneration for religion is quite compatible 
with a sound, practical understanding. Franklin was a man 
of a truly pious turn of mind. He appears to have been a 
Christian of the unitarian school. If his own faith had not 
gone so far, he at least would greatly have respected the reli- 
gion of his country, and done every thing to encourage its 
propagation. His moral writings are superior to almost any 
others, in any language; whether we regard the sound, and 
striking, and useful truths with which they abound, or the 
graceful and entertaining shape in which they are conveyed. 
His piety was sincere and habitual. Feelings of a devotional 
cast every where break forth in his writings. He is habitually 
a warm advocate for religion."! 

The article on Davis' Travels suggested some kind apolo- 
gies for us, on the important heads of intellect and literature, 
which augured favourably for the justness, as well as libe- 
rality, of the views, which would be always taken in relation 
to those subjects. 

" We do not mean to deny the charges against the litera- 
ture and learning of America: literature is one of those finer 
manufactures which a new country will always find it easier 
to import than to raise. There must be a great accumulation 
of stock in a nation, and a great subdivision of labour, before 
the arts of composition are brought to any great degree of 
perfection. The great avenues to wealth must be all filled, 
and many left in hereditary opulence or mediocrity, before 

* No. 16. t No. 57. 

Vol. I.— E e 



218 HOSTILITIES OF THE 

PART I. there can be leisure enough, among such a people, to relish 

••^^^^'■•■^ the beauties of poetry, or to create an effectual demand for 

the productions of genius. Tliese causes may for some time 

retain ihe genius of America in a state of subordination to 

that of Europe." 

" The truth is, that American genius has displayed itself, 
wherever inducements have been held out for its exertion. 
Their parly pamphlets, though disgraced with much intem- 
perance and scurrility, are written with a keenness and spirit, 
that is not often to be found in the old world; and their ora- 
tors, though occasionally declamatory and turgid, frequently 
possess a vehemence, correctness, and animation, that would 
command the admiration of any European audience, and excite 
the asionishment of those philosophers who have been taught 
Jo consider the western hemisphere as a grand receptacle for 
the degeneracies of nature." 

Afterwards, from time to time, we found general opinions 
uttered in the same quarter, which bespoke a correct appre- 
hension of our case, and some of which 1 think it well to 
introduce here. 

" Among men, the few who write bear no comparison to 
the many who read. We hear most of the former, indeed, 
because they are, in general, the most ostentatious part of 
literary men; but there are innumerable men who, without 
ever laying themselves before the public, have made use of 
literature to add to the strength of their understandings, and to 
improve the happiness of their lives." 

" We must say, that the Americans are not fairly judged of 
by their newspapers; which are written for the most part by 
expatriated Irishmen, or Scotchmen, and other adventurers of 
a similar description, who take advantage of the unbounded 
license of the press, to indulge their own fiery passions, and 
aim at exciting that attention by the violence of their abuse, 
which they are conscious they could never command by the 
force of their reasonings. The greater part of the polished 
and intelligent Jimericans appear little on the front of public 
life, and make no figure in her external history.'''' (1814). 

"It is pleasing to learn, that the isolated inhabitants of the 
western forests of America are cheered and enlightened with 
the distant literature of Europe; that there are here men capa- 
ble of communicating the benefits of its discoveries; and 
emulous in their turn, to extend the boundaries of knowledge 
by new discoveries of their own." (1805). 

" Whenever a taste for literature is created in America, we 
have no doubt that her authors will improve and multiply to a 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 



219 



degree that will make our exertions necessary to keep the start sec. vil. 
we now have of" them." (No. 29). -^ v^-^-v-^i^ 

"• The great body of the American people is better educated 
and more comfortably situated than the bulk of any European 
community, and possess all the accomplishments that are any 
where to be found in persons of the same occupation and con- 
dition." (No. 25). 

Having represenfed, or being capable of seeing, the ques- 
tion of our literature and intellectual condition in these lights, 
— discerning the general causes which either retarded our 
advancement, or prevented it from being visible abroad, — 
liberal critics, '' well wishers to America," delighted to 
protect her character from the insults of malice and the 
judgments of ignorance, might have been expected to abstain, 
as much as possible, from reciting our unavoidable deficiences 
or unsuccessful attempts; and especially from making them, on 
every practicable occasion, the subject of burlesque or oppro- 
brium: They might have been expected to treat our literary 
performances with the utmost lenity, and to hold out to us what- 
ever degree of positive encouragement was consistent with the 
true interests of literature; the more as, whatever we may 
have arrogated to ourselves in other respects, we have rarely 
set up exorbitant pretensions on the score of our books. Let 
us see how far such expectations have been fulfilled by the 
liberals of the Edinburgh Review. 

The first production of our press brought within their high 
cognizance, was the fifth volume of the Transactions of the 
American Philosophical Society. A society of this description, 
sprung from the most generous aspirations and benevolent 
aims; formed under the auspices of Franklin and Rittenhouse; 
arrested in its promising career by the war of the revoluiion, 
which required all the exertions of its members in other fields 
of public service; struggling anew, when the unnatural ag- 
gressor had consented to sheathe the sword, in a community 
universally engaged in business, and under all the disadvan- 
tages inseparable from a new country, to maintain the ap- 
pearance of vital action, in order to present a rallying point, 
and nucleus of science, for an infant nation — such a society 
was in itself, independently of the general considerations inti- 
mated above, fitted to conciliate forbearance, and even ten- 
derness and support, from the votaries of knowledge in the 
old world.* Its first offerings might be composed of no very 

* See Note O. 



220 HOSTILITIES OF THL 

PARTI, excellent materials; they might be deficient in interest and 
^'^'"'^'**-' instruction for an European savant; yet, liberal minds, 
alive to the excellence of its object, and the remote in- 
fluences of its rude essays, would not fail to receive them 
with respect, and to rejoice in its very existence, as an auspi- 
cious omen, and a certain source of future good. Whether 
actuated by reflections of this kind, or a confidence in its po- 
sitive merit, many of the most illustrious of the scientific 
world of Europe have sought to be ranked among its mem- 
bers; and displayed the title, when obtained, in the front of 
their works, with evident satisfaction. Of this number, I may 
cite Dugald Stewart, the most accomplished and enlightened 
of the countrymen of the Edinburgh critics. 

These, our well-wishers, proceeded, however, with a spirit 
diametrically opposite. They heaped indignities upon the 
volume of tlie American Transactions, and made their ac- 
count of it, the occasion of innuendos and sallies, against the 
taste and learning of America in general. The following ex- 
tracts will speak for themselves. 

" The want of refinement in arts and in Belles Lettres, is, 
by no means, the only circumstance, that disimguishes our 
kinsmen in North America, from the inhabitants of the eastern 
hemisphere. They appear to be pro|)crtionably deficient in 
scientific attainments. The volume now before us, one of the 
very Jew that ever issue from the American prcss^ contains the 
whole accumulation of American discovery and observation, 
during a course of peaceful years. It extends to 328 pages, 
and the most interesting communication it has to boast of is 
the valuable paper of our countryman^ Mr. Strickland. Of 
all the academical trifles which have ever been given to the 
world, eighty-nine of the pages, the work of Americans, are 
the most trivial and dull. Our readers will judge with what 
difficulty this mite has been collected, when we mention the 
subject," &c. 

" Some of the American philosophers themselves seem to 
have adopted the language of the ludicrously sentimental 
class to which M. Dupont de Nemours (the author of one of 
the papers) belongs, and to have thought it a good substitute 
for the eloquence and power of fine writing which Providence 
has denied to their race.'''' — "By the manner in which one of 
the American contributors cites, and more especially by his 
remarks upon classical learning, we are inclined to suspect 
that a man who reads the easier Latin poets is not to be met 
with every day fti North America. "^ — " We cannot resist the 
temptation of quoting a passage from his paper; the moralizing^ 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 221 

part of it is truly Jimerican. It is only necessary to add, for SEC.A'lI. 
the information of the .American Jicademies^ that the Latin ^^-"""^^--"^^ 
quotation is nothing at all to the purpose," &c. '' Meanly as 
our readers may be disposed to think of the American scienti- 
fic circles, they appear to be highly prized by their own mem- 
bers. The society whose labours we have been describing, 
attaches to itself the name of 'Philosophical' loith peculiar 
eagerness; and the meeting-house^ where the transactions of 
its members are scraped together^ and prepared for being in- 
accurately printed, is, in the genuine dialect of tradesmen, de- 
nominated ' Philosophical Hall.' " 

"We have dwelt longer upon this article than its merits 
justify, for the purpose of stating and exemplifying a most 
curious and unaccountable fact — the scarcity of all but mercan- 
tile and agricultural talents in the neiv ivorld.''''* 

3. The American work that next attracted the attention of 
our patrons, happened to be from the pen of a minister pleni- 
potentiary of the United States on the continent of Europe, 
the son of the American President. These qualities of the 
author, although they did not entitle him to deference as 
such, yet gave him claims to some particular personal fa- 
vour and respect, from critics of the whig-school, and of 
the bon-ton of European society. And he would have every 
right to expect the most indulgent dispositions, for his work, 
if, composed of sketches which were reluctantly permitted to 
go before the American public in the pages of an American 
periodical paper, without ulterior destination, it had taken the 
shape of a distinct volume, through the cupidity of a London 
Bookseller; — if at the same time it was altogether free from 
pretensions, and professedly limited to certain heads of obser- 
vation, upon which accurate information might be of particular 
utility to his countrymen. The " Letters from Silesia" of Mr. 
John Quincy Adams, to which it will be understood that I 
have been referring, were attended with these circumstances 
apparent upon the face of the volume into which they were 
collected. I will venture to affirm, moreover, that they pos- 
sess much absolute, intrinsic merit; that they are greatly above 
the common standard of applauded English tours, and would 
have been declared creditable in all respects, had they been 
the production of an Englishman in a similar station. But the 
Edinburgh Review was as ungracious and wayward in this 
instance, as in that of the American Philosophical Society. It 

* Compare this with the quotations in p. 218, 



222 HOSTILITIES OK THE 

PART I, not only launched into broad generalities, and drew iar-1'etched 
'-.^-^^^^i.^ analogies, to decry the work of Mr. Adams, but was at much 
pains to dispar;ig<; his understanding and feelings; and turned 
aside from ihe only proper subject of animadversion, to carp 
and snter at ihe studies and mind of his country. These asser- 
tions might be ihe more strikingly illustrated here, did not the 
same tone and design pervade nearly the whole of the article 
in question; at the same time that the critics cannot effectually 
conceal the sense, which they really entertain, of the merits of 
the Letters. A few excerpts from the article will be enough 
for the occasion. 

"It may appear somewhat hard to subject a work which 
does not offend by any pretensions to a comparison with the 
excellent standards of its kind; but when we held this work 
in our hands, we could not help thinking of the American 
Presidency, and of the state of learning in that powerful and 
prosperous commonwealth." 

" Although this author is neither lively nor very instructive, 
he shows some qualities which makes him a tolerable compa- 
nion for a very short ioMr."**"The feelings of Mr. Adams 
about his native country more resemble the loyal acquiescence 
of a subject, than the personal interest and ardour of a repub- 
lican."**" His style is, in general, very tolerable English, 
which, for Jlmerican composition, is no moderate praise. "**"A 
spurious dialect, it is probable, will prevail even at the court 
and in the Senate of the United Stales, until that great com- 
monwealth shall become opulent enough to break more dis- 
tinctly into classes," &c. 

At the appearance of another American work of the highest 
possible interest and elevation as to the subject, and proceeding 
from the first law-diguitary of the American republic, not more 
respectable by his exalted station, than by his general talents 
and private virtues — I mean the Life of Washington by Chief 
Justice Marshall — a fair opportunity was afforded the Edin- 
burgh illuminati, to resist " the impertinence and vulgar in- 
solence," and the " bitter sneering" of the ministerial party 
with respect to American concerns, by the force of example, 
in a generous exposition of the merits which they might dis- 
cover in the performance: a scrupulous abstinence from harsh 
and supererogatory reflections on the author or his coun- 
try, and a commemoration of those traits in the American 
revolution, which distinguish it as the purest and noblest among 
the most important and celebrated in the history of the world. 
Nothing would have seemed more remote from probability, 
than that the disciples of Fox could, on the occasion of re- 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 223 

viewing an autiientic biography of Washington, labour mainly SEC. VIL 
to appear smart and knowing, at the expense of the nation ^^-v^"^^ 
which had produced this model of heroes, and even insult the 
faithful and unassuming biographer, who had been his compa- 
nion in arms, had enjoyed his intimate friendship, and shared 
with him the labours and honours of his civil administration. 
Whether they pursued so unworthy a course, and how far 
they improved the opportunity above mentioned, to the very 
reverse of the proper ends, may be ascertained by the follow- 
ing short extracts from the article under consideration. 

" Mr. Marshall must not promise himself a reputation com- 
mensurate with the dimensions of his work." 

" Mr. Chief Justice Marshall preserves a most dignified and 
mortifying silence regarding every particular of Washington's 
private life, &c. Mr. Marshall may be assured that what 
passes with him for dignity, will, by his reader, be pronounced 
dullness and frigidity." 

" The Speeches in this work display great commercial 
knowledge, and a keen style of argument — but oratory is not 
to be looked for in a country which has none of the kindred 
arts. All the specimens of American eloquence grievously 
sin against the canons of taste." 

" A more diffuse and undiscriminating narrative we have 
seldom perused. It is deficient in almost every thing that con- 
stitutes historical excellence,'''' &c. &c. 

This last stricture upon the narrative is followed imme- 
diately by the observation — " It displays industry, good 
sense, and, so far as we can judge, laudable impartiality; and 
the style, though neither elegant nor impressive, is yet, upon 
the whole, clear and manly." No ingenuity but that of the 
Edinburgh critics, would be adequate to explain, how a nar- 
rative acknowledged to possess these qualities — which Blair 
indicates " as the primary qualities required in a good histo- 
rian" — could yet be justly proclaimed " deficient in almost 
every thing that constitutes historical excellence." 

They are careful, in the abundance of their tenderness for 
America, to note, as they proceed with Judge Marshall, " the 
ludicrous proposition of her Congress to declare herself ihe most 
enlightened nation on the globe." This taunt had been so often 
in the mouth of the party stigmatized for an " odious, miserable, 
vulgar spirit of abuse against America," that the repetition of 
it by her friends, can be accounted for, only by its egregious 
pleasantry. I propose to enquire into its justice hereafter, 
and hope to render this point at least doubtful. Towards the 
conclusion of the article on the Life of Washington, there is 



224 



HOSTILITIES OP THE 



PART I. this invidious remark: " We think it a pretty strong proof of 
^■^"-^■"^^ the poverty of the literary attainments of America, that she 
has noi been able to tell the story of her own revolution, and 
to pourtray the character of her hero and sage, in language 
worthy such subjects." 
**•' I do not mean to affirm that the story of our revolution 
has been told absokitely well by Marshall, or by Ramsay, 
whose Life of Washington is so unceremoniously consigned by 
the Scottish reviewers to the circulating libraries. Ramsay's 
History of ihe American Revolution, which, it is probable, 
they had never deigned to open, is, however, a respectable 
producfion in all points of view; quite equal, as regards lite- 
rary execution, to any historical essay respecting the affairs of 
Eiigiand, for the last century, and superior, as regards the au- 
thenticity of materials, and opportunities of knowledge. The 
Somervilles, the Enticks, the Belshams, the Russels, the 
Adolphus', the Giffords, the Biglands, are certainly below the 
level of Ramsay. 

To no people whatever can we apply more exactly, than to 
the American, the observation which I have quoted from the 
Edinburgh Review, that " among them the few who write 
bear no comparison to the many who read." According to 
the drift of the Review in making this observation, it would 
be unjust to declare the poverty of the literary attainments of 
America, on the ground that she has not yet produced a first 
rate history of her revolution: as, in point of fact, nothing can 
be more unfounded than the allegation. We are told by a 
Scottish authority, Blair, that the island of Britain, was not 
eminent for its historical productions, till within a few years 
prior to the time at which he wrote; that, during a long pe- 
riod, English historical authors were little more than dull com- 
""^ pilers, when at length the distinguished names of Hume, Ro- 
bertson, and Gibbon, raised the British character in that 
species of writing.* Now, if the logic of the Edinburgh Re- 
view, in reference to America, be adopted — if the circum- 
stance of our not having told well the story of our revolution 
be " a pretty strong proof of the poverty of our literary attain- 
ments," we have, in the statement of Blair, " pretty strong 
proof" that Great Britain laboured under the same reproach 
until the middle of the eighteenth century. And the igno- 
miny would be tenfold, considering the superior advantages of 
her situation for centuries before that period. The absence 
of historians of the highest order is, certainly, the last defect 

* Lectures on Rhetoric, — Lecture 36. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 225 

ill our literature to be censured by a nation whose historical sec. vii. 
authors were but dull compilers^ so long after she had the full \-;*-n'-^' 
enjoyment of all those facilities to perfection in the arts of 
composition, which the Edinburgh Review has justly stated to 
be necessarily wanting to a new country.* 

There is no part of the matter introduced into the Life of 
Washington; there are none of the "provincial documents" 
with which it is peevishly said to be loaded, that are not in- 
teresting and important to the American public; and for this 
public the work was chiefly intended. It became, inevitably, 
a History of the American Revolution, not only on account of 
the connexion, more or less immediate, of the hero, with all 
the great occurrences of the drama, but from the tenor of his 
manuscripts upon which it was composed, and which the 
biographer was bound to turn to the fullest account. Its bulk 
is not, therefore, a well-grounded objection; or might, at least, 
have found indulgence with those, who could not have been 
ignorant of the more inordinate size of Clarendon's History of 
the Rebellion; Roscoe's Life of Leo X.; Gilford's Life of 
PiU; Fra-Paolo's History of the Council of Trent; Guicciar- 
dini's History, and many other similar works of great ce- 
lebrity, of which the subjects are of less real importance and 
dignity, and extend through no greater portion of time. But, 
the true, and principally, exceptionable feature, in Marshall's 
volumes, is one which has never, as far as I know, been 
observed at home, and which the foreign critics, had they 
been able to perceive it, would have been careful not to sig- 
nalize. He has given, as historical evidence, determining a 
general phasis of the revolution, the desponding representa- 
tions made by Washington in his private letters to Congress; 
representations which took their hue as well from the design 
of the writer to stimulate that body, to the utmost pitch of a 
particular kind of effort, as from the engrossing disquietudes 
natural and common with the firmest minds, under the imme- 
diate pressure, or apprehension, of heavy embarrassments. 
The biographer has so exhibited the difficulties inherent in our 
defence, and the momentary impressions which their emergence 
made upon the Commander in chief, as to lend much colour 
of reason at least, to the derogatory suggestion of the Edin- 
burgh Review — " He must be blind who does not see in this 
History^ that all the array of American patriotism would have 
been utterly unable, but for the incapacity of her enemy, to 

* Note P. 

Vol. I.— F f 



226 



HOSTILITIES OP THE 



PART r. secure her independence." The main idea is certainly couu- 
'-^^''^^-^ tenanced by some of the letters of Washington; but it is not^ 
therefore, the less unsound, or easy of refutation upon a 
comprehensive and critical survey of the whole history of 
the revolution. No British writer will assert, or admit, that 
the success of the British forces under Wolfe, in the memor- 
able siege of Quebec, was owing to the " incapacity of the 
enemy:" But the tone of the first despatches of that intrepid 
leader to the British secretary of state, is quite as desponding, 
as the private communications of Washington to the American 
congress, and would equally, upon the principles of the Edin- 
burgh Review, warrant such a conclusion. The British poli- 
tician of an enlarged and sagacious mind, who will look into 
the parliamentary history for the three first years of our strug- 
gle, will find there, in the facts and views presented by the 
whig orators, enough to convince him of the error of any hy- 
pothesis, implying, that we could not have worked out our 
political salvation, bdt for the mismanagement of the British 
ministry, and the aid of the French court. 

4. The life of Washington having failed to draw the Edin- 
burgh wits from the course, to appearance so little in unison 
with their professions, which was pursued with the letters of 
Mr. Adams, we cannot be surprised if the Columbiad of Bar- 
low wrought no better effect. It seems to have been committed 
to the Momus of the fraternity for special diversion. Ac- 
cordingly, the American Epic is introduced, with refined 
humour, as "the goodly firstling of the infant muse of Ame- 
rica;" and, by way, no doubt, of manfully resisting ministe- 
rial impertinence, and generously soothing the feelings of the 
poet's countrymen for the sentence which it might be necessary 
to pass upon his work — the reviewer immediately salutes them 
as follows: — " These federal republicans are very much such 
people, we suppose, as the modern traders of Liverpool, Man- 
chester, or Glasgow. They have a little Latin whipped into 
them in their youth, and read Shakspeare, Pope and Milton, 
as well as bad English novels, in their days of courtship and 
leisure." 

I cannot undertake to repeat the exquisite jokes of this 
article on the Columbiad — such, for instance, as the one 
about " those fluent and venerable personages, the rivers Po- 
tomak and Delaware," nor the many quips respecting the 
American diction; but it is proper to quote one or two more 
phrases, to illustrate the obstinacy of that unlucky mood which 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 237 

Would be ever at variance with the most magnanimous de- SEC. vil. 
signs of patronage. v,^^v-^»p^ 

" We have often heard it reported that our transatlantic 
brethren were beginning to take it amiss that their language 
should still be called English. As this is the first specimen 
which has come into our hands of any considerable work in 
the American tongue, it may be gratifying to our philological 
readers," &c. 

" These republican literati seem to make it a point of con- 
science to have no aristocratical distinctions — even in their 
vocabulary: they think one word just as good as another, 
provided the meaning be clear," &c. 

Aspersions upon the capacity and literature of the Ameri- 
can people at large, might have been spared by " well- 
wishers," even in a criticism upon an American work. But 
it would seem still more incongruous and wanton, to hold 
them up to contempt, in reviewing a mere book of travels in 
America, declared, at the same time, to be in the last degree 
incredible and despicable. This, however, is done in the 
account of Ashe's Travels, in the 30th number of the Edin- 
burgh Journal; where, while the reviewer affects to reprobate 
and deride the tales of the wretched impostor and swindler,* 
he lends himself to his malignant purpose. It is from them 
that the magnates of Scottish literature take occasion to flout 
and decry a nation of kinsmen in the following language: 

" We could just as readily believe that the orations of 
Sheridan are written by a Philadelphia-man, as that the 

* Dr Drake relates, in his "Picture of Cincinnati," the following 
anecdote of Ashe. 

•' In the years 1802-3, Dr. William Goforth, with an ardour of curio- 
sity that deserved a better reward than awaited his exertions, dug up in 
Kentucky, and transported to Cincinnati, several waggon loads of Mam- 
moth bones. They were, by the Doctor and George Turner, one of the 
members of the American Philosophical Society, examined attentively, 
and supposed to be the remains of no less than six non-descript qua- 
drupeds, most of them gigantic! Among the rest, some of the bones 
of the rhinoceros were thought to be ascertained. Judge Turner made 
accurate drawings of the most curious of those fossils, but has been so 
unfortunate as to lose them. 

"In the spring of the year 1803, the Doctor formed the design of 
transporting these bones to the Atlantic states. They reached Pitts- 
burgh, and were there stored. Early in 1806, Professor Barton made 
an application to purchase them ; but at that time they had attracted 
the attention of a foreign swindler, named Thomas Arville, alias ^she, 
who obtained permission of the owner to ship them to Europe, for 
exhibition ; since which they have not been heard of. To this per- 
sonal injury of a worthy individual, the miscreant has since added ft 
libel on the American people." 



3^8 HOSTILITIES OF THt 

PART I. speech of an American orator is the work of a Scotch re- 

^^^"^--^ porter." 

" It is no doubt true, that America can produce nothing to 
bring her intellectual efforts into any sort of comparison with 
that of Europe. These republican states have never passed 
the limits of humble mediocrity^ either in thought or expression. 
Noah Webster, we are afraid, still occupies the first place in 
criticism, Timothy Dwight and Joel Barlow in poetry, and 
Mr. Justice Marshall in history: and, as to the physical sci- 
ences, we shall merely observe, that a little elementary trea- 
tise of botany appeared in 1803; and that this paltry contri- 
bution to natural history is chronicled, by the latest American 
historian, among the remarkable occurrences since the revo- 
lution In short, federal America has done nothing, either to 
extend, diversify, or embellish the sphere of human know- 
ledge. Though all she has written were obliterated from the 
, records of learning, there would, if we except the works of 
Franklin, be no positive diminution, either of the useful or 
the agreeable. The destruction of her whole literature would 
not occasion so much regret as we feel for the loss of a few 
leaves from an ancient classic." 

" But, notwithstanding all this, we really cannot agree with 
Mr. Ashe in thinking the Americans absolutely incapable^ or 
degenerate; and are rather inclined to think, that when their 
neighbourhood thickens, and their opulence ceases to depend 
on exertion, they will show smnething of the same talents to 
which it is a part of our duty to do justice among ourselves. 
And we are the more inclined to adopt this favourable opinion^ 
from considering, that her history has already furnished occa- 
sions for the display of talents of a high order; and that, in 
the ordinary business of government, she displays no mean 
share of ability and eloquence." 
' " That the Americans have great and peculiar faults, both 

in their manners and in their morality, we take to be undeni- 
able. Their manners, for the most part, are those of a scat- 
tered, migratory, but speculating people; and there will be no 
great amendment until their population becomes more dense, 
and more settled in its habits. As the population becomes con- 
centered, and the spirit of adventure is deprived of its objects, 
the sense of honour will improve icith the importance of cha- 
racter.'' (No. 30.)* 

The relish for the topic of the insignificance of American 
literature, and for the waggish citation of the names of some 

* See Note Q. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 



229 



of the American literati, proved so keen and lasting, that we SEC.Vil 
have been recently treated with them again. What archness, 's.^'-v-'^^ 
sagacity, knowledge, and despatch in the following passage of 
the article on the travels of Fearon — that rightful successor 
of Ashe, worthy of exciting the same strain in the reviewer! 

" Literature the Americans have none — no native litera- 
ture, I mean. It is all imported. They had a Franklin, 
indeed; and may afford to live for half a century on his fame. 
There is, or was, a Mr. Dwight, who wrote some poems; and 
his baptismal name was Timothy.* There is also a small 
account of Virginia by Jefferson, and an epic by Joel Barlow — 
and some pieces of pleasantry by Mr. Irving. But why should 
the Americans write books, when a six weeks passage brings 
them, in their own tongue, our sense, science, and genius, in 
bales and hogsheads. Prairies, steam-boats, grist-mills, are 
their natural objects for centuries to come. Then, when they 
have got to the Pacific ocean — epic poems, plays, pleasures of 
memory, and all the elegant gratifications of an ancient peo- 
ple who have tamed the wild earth, and set down to amuse 
themselves r^ 

5. The Edinburgh Review, preluded, as we have seen, 
with apologizing for our supposed deficiencies in literature, 
but quickly fell into the habit of emblazoning them to the 
utmost, whenever America happened to be in question, even 
as to matters entirely distinct. A similar course has been 

* Dr. Dwight seems to have obtained a permanent niche in tlie me- 
mory of the critic. Thus we have, on another occasion. *'f he poetry 
of Dr. Dwight is evidently the growth of a country where only the 
coarser sorts of industry yet flourish." (No. 29.) Now, considering 
this utter unworthiness of the Connecticut poet, it is rather extraordi- 
nary that Darwin should have ascribed to his Conqutst of Canaan 
" much fine versification." (Botanic Garden, note, line 364, pari 1.) ; and 
that Campbell, whom the reviewers have placed above all the bards of 
the age, should have borrowed passages from his reUeious epic to 
adorn a compilation of the beauties of English poetry, fn introducing 
these passages, Campbell remarks, indeed, — " Of this American poet 
I am sorry to be able to give the British reader no account. I beheve 
his personal history is as little known as his poetry, on this side of the 
Atlantic." But, truly, the British reader might justly complain ; for. 
Dr. Dwight made so conspicuous a figure in the affairs of New Eng- 
land, and was so diffusively and advantageously famous throughout tliis 
country, that it would not have been very difficult to come at his per- 
sonal history, even in London. The President of Yale College, the 
second in the union in extent and consideration ; an eminent divine, 
a politician of great influence, a voluminous, popular and able writer, 
could remain unknown only to those who were entirely ignorant of 
American aff'airs 



230 HOSTILITIES OF THL 

PART I. pursued by the critics in relation to our moral condition,- man- 
^'•^^'^'^*^ ners, and general dispositions. Their excuses for their " kins- 
men of the west," on these heads, have almost always had, 
more or less, the air of mockery, and carried a sharper sling 
than their open defamation. The following passages are won- 
derfully kind and encouraging, and furnish a specimen of the 
sapient, maternal discussions about us in the mother country. 

" Why the Americans are disliked in this country we have 
never been able to understand; for most certainly they re- 
semble us far more than any other nation in the world. They 
are brave and boastful, and national and factious, like our- 
selves; — about as polished as 99 in 100 of our own country- 
men in the upper ranks — and at least as moral and well edU' 
cated in the lower. Their virtues are such as we ought to 
admire — for they are those on which we value ourselves most 
highly: and their very faults seem to have some claim to our 
indulgence, since they are those with which we also are re- 
proached by third parties." (1814). 

" The complaint respecting America is, that there are no 
people of fashion — that their column still wants its Corinthian 
capital — or, in other words, that those who are rich and idle, 
have not yet existed so long, or in such numbers, as to have 
brought to full perfection that system of ingenious trifling, and 
elegant dissipation, by means of which it has been discovered 
that wealth and leisure may be most agreeably disposed of. 
Admitting the fact to be so, and in a country where there is no 
court, no nobility, and no monument or tradition of chivalrous 
usages — and where, moreover, the greatest number of those 
who are rich and powerful have raised themselves to that 
eminence by mercantile industry, we really do not see how 
it could well be otherwise — we could still submit, that this is 
no lawful cause either for national contempt, or for national 
hostility. It is a peculiarity in the structure of society among 
that people, which, we take it, can only give offence to their 
visiting acquaintance; and, while it does us no sort of harm 
while it subsists, promises, we think, very soon to disappear 
altogether, and no longer to afflict even our imaginations. 
The number of individuals born to the enjoyment of heredi- 
tary wealth is, or at least was, daily increasing in that coun- 
try; and it is impossible that their multiplication, — with all 
the models of European refinement before them, and all the 
advantages resulting from a free government, and a general 
system of good education — should fail, within a very short 
period, to give birth to a better tone of conversation and society^ 
and to manners more dignified and refined. Unless we are very 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 231 

much misinformed indeed, the symptoms of such a change may SEC. VII. 
already be traced in their cities. Their youths of fortune al- v^'>'''w<' 
ready travel over all the countries of Europe for their improve- 
ment; and specimens are occasionally met with even in these 
islands, which, with all our prejudices, we must admit, would 
do no discredit to the best blood of the land from which they 
originally sprung."* 

There would have been too much of consistency in pre- 
serving, on all occasions, the condescension exerted in these 
passages. The tone of greeting is not so mincing or comfort- 
able in the following extracts: 

" The public functionaries in America are so poorly pro- 
vided, that no prosperous counsellor, for instance, will accept 
of the office of judge, and few men of abilities will dedicate 
them to so unprofitable a task as the management of public 
affair ■>. Their legislature is therefore deficient both in talent 
and authority, and she has already experienced more than one 
shock from the irregular impulse of that ambition and talent 
for which no adequate recompense has been provided within 
the pale of her constitution." (No. 28). 

" The Americans are all jealous republicans, and all out- 
rageously proud of their constitution, and vain of their country. 
This passion exists, in America, in a degree that is both 
offensive and ridiculous to strangers!" (No. 40). 

" They, of the western country, are hospitable to strangers, 
because they are seldom troubled with them; and because 
they have always plenty of maize and smoked hams.f Their 
hospitality, too, is always accompanied with impertinent 
questions; and a disgusting displav of national vanity." 
fNo. 13). 

'• There are no very prominent men at present in America; 
at least, none whose fame is strong enough for exportation. 
Munro is a man of plain, unaffected good sense. Jefferson, 

* No. 40. 

•f The poor Irish at least, are placed out of the reach of so charitable 
an explanation; and if the people of England are hospitable, it is not 
certainly from this cause. I take the following from Bell's Weekly 
Messenerer for Feb. 7th, 1819. 

" On Friday a donation of the Regent gave cheerfulness to the 
lowly habitations of the indigent of Brighton. A large quantity of 
prime beef, to the value of one hundred pounds, by royal command, 
was distributed to the industrious poor with families, in proportions 
according to their number and necessities, by the parochial officers. 
The xvidoTvs' and the orphans^ tears bore testimony of the gratitude felt, and 
expressions of thankfulness, directed toxvards their beloved and p-enerous be- 
nefactor, were tinivereal" 



232 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 



PART 1. y)e believe^ is still alive; and has always been more remark- 
^^^^^'^'' able, perhaps, for the early share he took in the formation of 
the republic, than from any very predominant superiority of 
understanding." (No. 61). 

It is well to be undeceived, let the nature of the error be 
what it may. But the Americans had credulously imagined, 
that the fame of the military and naval commanders by whom 
the British were, during the last American war, " worsted in 
most of their naval encounters, and baffled in most of their 
enterprises by land,"* was " strong enough for exportation." 
They thought the same, with respect to those " statesmen, 
most of whom survive, by whom the affairs of the United 
States have been administered in times of great difficulty, with 
a forbearance, circumspection, and constancy, not surpassed 
in those commonwealths who have been most justly reno-vned 
for the wisdom of their councils."! As regards Mr. Jeffer- 
son, it will not be deemed an unaccountable illusion in the 
Americans to have ascribed to him " a predominant superi- 
ority of understanding," when it is recollected that they had 
read the following remarks in the article of the Edinburgh 
Review on Janson's travels: " Mr. Janson drags individuals 
into notice without ceremony. As for his endless invectives 
against Mr. Jefferson, they belong to another class of wrongs, 
and only obtain their share of the dignified contempt by which 
that eminently wise ruler has consigned to oblivion all the 
spoken and written scurrility of his enemies."| While them- 
selves engaged in " dragging individuals into notice," the 
Scottish critics should not have forgotten the names of John 
Adams, James Madison, John Jay, Rufus King, Thomas 
Pinckney, De Witt Clinton, John Quincy Adams, and even 
Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, all of whom, by a diligent per- 
quisition, they could have ascertained to be still on the stage of 
life. Two of these at least, might be considered as prominent, 
since they wrote the principal portion of the work called the 
Federalist, which the Scottish dispensers of renown have 
themselves described as " a publication tliat exhibits an extent 
and precision of information, a profundity of research, and an 
acuteness of understanding, which would have done honour to 
the most illustrious statesman of ancient or modern times."§ 



* Edinburgh Review. — 1814. 
f Ibid. No. 61. Article on Universal Suffrage. 
i No. 29. 

§ No. 24. Article on Hillhouse's proposed amendmeot to the Ame- 
rican ConstiUition. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 23S 

In the number of this journal, the 61st, which tells us that SEC.VII. 
He have no prominent men, it is obligingly said, " the Ameri- v-^-v-^^ 
cans are a very sensible, reflecting people, and have conducted 
their atFairs extremely welW'^ but at the same moment the com- 
pliment is relracied, in a burst of spleen more violent and 
acrid, than any of the eff'usions of the Quarterly Review, 
which I shall soon be called to notice. 

" The great curse of America is the institution of slavery — 
of itself far more than the foulest blot upon their national 
character, and an evil which counterbalances all the excise- 
men, licensers, and tax-gatherers of England." 

" That slavery should exist among men who know the value 
of liberty, and profess to understand its principles, is the con- 
summation of icickedness. Every American, who loves his 
country, should dedicate his whole life, and every faculty of 
his soul, to efface this foul stain from its character. If nations 
rank according to their wisdom and their virtue, what right 
has the American, a scourger and murderer of slaves, to com- 
pare himself with the least and the loioest of the European na- 
tions? much more with this great and humane country, where 
the greatest lord dare not lay a finger upon the meanest pea- 
sant? What is freedom, where all are not free? Where the 
greatest of God's blessings is limited, with impious caprice, 
to the colour of the body? And these are the men who taunt 
the English with their corrupt parliament, with their buying 
and selling votes. Let the world judge which is the most 
liable to censure — we who, in the midst of our rottenness, 
have torn off the manacles of slaves all over the world, or they -- 

who, with their idle purity, and useless perfection, have re- 
mained mute and careless, while groans echoed and whips 
clanked round the very walls of their spotless Congress. The 
existence of slavery in America is an atrocious crime, with 
which no measures can be kept — for which her situation affords 
no apology — which makes liberty itself distrusted, and the 
boast of it disgusting." 

6. It was, perhaps, known to the authors of the Review, 
that no small part of the American public, in spite of all 
that 1 have quoted from it of an earlier date, still credulously 
relied upon its general professions and character. They mag- 
nanimously determined at length, to dissipate the delusion, or 
conceived the project of putting it to the last test, by these 
fierce invectives. 

I will discuss, in another place, the validitv of the sweeping 
Vol. T.—G g 



^4 HOSTILITIES OP THE 

PART I. charges founded upon the existence of domestic slavery among 
^-^^^'-^^ us, my immediate object being little more than to exemplify 
the feeling, or the policy, of the leading journals of Great 
Britain. We may, however, delay a while, to illustrate further 
the consistency and modesty of the Edinburgh critics. In the 
same article which contains the charges just mentioned, they 
write thus. " Any person, with tolerable prosperity here in 
England, had better remain where he is. There are consi- 
derable evils, no doubt, in England; but it would be madness 
not to admit that it is, upon the whole, a very happy country. 
Now, it was only in the number of their journal immediately 
preceding, in the article on Birbeck's travels, that we read 
the following language. 

" With all its excellencies, the English government is a 
most expensive one: protection to person and property is no 
where so dearly purchased; and the follies of the people, and 
the corruption of their rulers, have entailed Such a load of 
debt upon us, that whoever prefers his own to any other coun- 
try, as a place of residence, must be content to pay an enor- 
mous price for the gratification of his wish. In truth, a 
temptation to emigrate is now held out to all persons of mo- 
derate fortune, which must, in very many cases, prove altoge- 
ther irresistible. Nor can any thing be more senseless than 
the wonder testified by some zealous lovers of their native 
land, at any family of small income, seeking a more fruitful 
soil and a better climate, where half their means may not be 
seized to pay the state and the poor. Mr. Birbeck, as a 
moderate capitalist, and the father of a large family, may be 
justified in every point of view for leaving this country." 

In the last pages of the article on Birbeck's Travels, it is 
elaborately maintained by the reviewer, that the American 
union will continue: but, in the next number of the Journal, 
we are told that " it is scarcely possible to conceive that such 
an empire as the American should very long remain undi- 
vided." The truly sound doctrine of the article on Birbeck 
furnishes the best answer to this assertion. It is as follows. 

"It mijjlit be proper, however, to consider the real ground of stabi- 
lity which the government of America possesses, before we decide in 
so positive a nsanner against it. There can be little doubt, that the 
whole question turns upon the difference of American and European 
society, and the total want in the former, of that race of political cha- 
racters which abounds in the latter. In America, all men have abun- 
dant occupation of their own, without thinking of the state. Every 
person is deeply interested, and perpetually engaged, In driving his 
trade, and cultivating his land : and little time is left to any one for 
thinking of state affairs, except as a subject of conversation. As a 
business they engage the attention of no one except the rulers of the 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 



236 



country; and even they keep the concerns of the public subordinate SRC. VII. 
to their own. The governor ot" a state is generally a large land owner ^^v^^,^ 
and farmer of his own ground. A foreign minister is the active mem- 
ber of a lucrative and laborious profession, quitting it for a few months, 
and returning to its gains and its toils when his mission is ended. The 
business of the senate occupies but a few weeks in the year; and no 
man devotes himself so much to its duties, as to leave it doubtful to 
what class of the industrious community he properly belongs. The 
race of mere statesmen, so well known among us in the Old World, is 
wholly unknown in the New; and until it springs up, even the founda- 
tions of a change cannot be considered as laid. The Americans no 
doubt are, like other freemen, decided partisans, and warm political 
combatants; but what project or chance can counterbalance, in their 
eyes, the benefits conferred by the union, of cultivating their soil, and 
pursuing their traffic freely and gainfully, in their capacity of private 
individuals ? A preacher of insurrection might safely be left with such 
personages as the American farmers; and until the whole frame of 
society alters, even a great increase of political characters will not 
enable those persons successfully to appeal to the bulk of the comm*- 
nity, with the prospect of splitting the union. The cautious and eco- ' 

nomical character of the Federal Government seems admirably adapted 
to secure its hold over the affections of a rational and frugal people." 

The Edinburgh Review is, doubtless, the last quarter in 
which we are to look for |jroof of the assertions that England 
is " a very happy country, where all are free" — " a great and 
humane country, which has torn off the manacles of slaves 
all over the world." In the same article in which those asser- 
tions are made, we read that " a very disgusting feature in 
the present English government is its extreme timidity, and 
the cruelty and violence to which its timidity gives birth;" 
that in government-cases the judges are not independent; that 
" the savage spectacle" is exhibited " of a poor wretch, per- 
haps a very honest man, contending in vain against the weight 
of an immense government, pursued by a zealous attorney, 
and sentenced, by some candidate, perhaps, for the favour of 
the crown, to the long miseries of the dungeon." On the 
point of England's having " torn off the manacles of slaves 
all over the world," the several articles of that Journal con- 
cerning the condition of the blacks in the British West Indies, 
of the Hindoos, of the Irish Catholics, furnish an admirable 
commentary. The same Number in which that glorious dis- 
tinction is claimed for England, begins with an account of 
Mills' History of British India, and ends with a view of the 
state of the Irish Catholics; wherein her millions of Irish and 
Indian subjects are represented as labouring under the most 
galling and witherfng tyranny. The language of the follow- 
ing passages, for instance, is tolerably significative, and has 
the advantage of being undeniably true. 



^36 HOSTlLltlES OV THE 

PART I. " We find, at the very outset of the history of the East India Coin- 
^^-v-^^ pany as a governing body, a series of acts of treachery and unjust vio- 
lence, such as it would not be easy to match in the annals of men whom 
we are accustomed to consider as the worst of tyrants." 

•' We are accustomed to rate very highly the secu7-ity which is de- 
rived from being governed by men having the advantages of English 
education and English feelings. But it affords a lesson of melancholy 
instruction as to the feebleness of this security, when we see gentlemen 
eminently possessed of these advantages, and placed far above the 
reach of want, ready to destroy the commerce of a great country, to 
break down the administration of justice, to oppress the people, to 
violate treaties, to kindle a war, and to depose a monarch, their ally, 
merely to secure to themselves the profits of an illegal traffic." 

" Such are the melancholy results of the attempts to improve the 
condition of Bengal, described not by inimical observers or severe 
judges, but by the magistrates who, from the prejudices of their situa- 
tion, would be incHned to behold every indication of improvement, 
under the auspices of a British administration, with a favourable eye. 
Every person of rank and property reduced to the lowest condition, — 
the cultivator exposed to intolerable exaction, — the courts of justice 
virtually closed against suitors, — the most terrible of crimes increased 
to that extent, that no security for person or property can be said to 
exist, — minor offences iK)t diminished, — dissoluteness of morals be- 
come more genera!, — and a police, of which the vices render it, instead 
of a benefit, a pest to the country : these, according to the highest 
authorities, are the characteristics of that part of India, where our 
reforms have had the longest time to operate." 

" To this picture must those open their eyes, who have been con- 
soling themselves, on every act of aggression and conquest, however 
unjust in itself, with the reflection that the extension of the British 
power was an extension of benefits and of security to the natives. 
One advantage has certainly attended the introduction of an English 
administration: the direct oppression which the superiors exercised, 
as of right, over their inferiors is lessened; but that oppression was 
much less terrible than the increased acts of violence and cruelty of 
the unlicensed plunderers who were kept in awe by the vigilance of 
the former rulers; nor can the occasional acts of violence, on the 
part of the native governments, towards its higher subjects, bear a 
comparison with those regulations, which have produced a greater 
change in the landed property than was ever known before, and in a 
few years reduced the majority of the zemindars to distress and beg- 
gary." 

"The lawless habits of the people, in the ordinary and best state of 
the interior of Ireland, and all the occasional flisturbances of a more 
serious character, are to be traced to the system of law which has 
divided the inhabitants of Ireland into a Protestant Oligarchy, admi- 
nistering in detail the government of the country over a Caiholic mul- 
titude :— The one armed with all sorts of arbitrary powers; the other 
excluded from the constitution, and subjected to every species of 
penalties." 

*' In all former times of peace, the establishment for Ireland has been 
8000 men. The number voted last year was 22,000. Besides the 
expense of maintaining this extra number of 14,000 men, there is also 
the expense of police establishments, prosecutions, and a variety of 
other charges, which grow out of the system of governing the people 
on the principle of exclusion from their civil rights. In the last year's 
public accounts, there is a charge of 38,952/, for police establishments 
in proclaimed districts ; and another for 12,000/. secret service, in 
detecting treasonable conspiracies." 



BRITISH REVIEWS^. 237 

"In vain have the hands of government been strengthcncil in Ire- SEC.Vfl. 
land, and the terrors of its power let loose, in every form of civil pro- \^r~\'-^\,^, 
'^cription and military execution. The evil of an alienated population is 
not to be so overmastered. They cannot love a consiiUitioii from 
which they are excluded, nor venerate a law which withholds from 
them the rights which it secures to the more favoured part of the po- 
pulation, by whom it is made and administered." 

With respect to the many hundred thousand blacks of the 
British West Indies, the manner in which their manacles have 
been "torn off" is sufficiently illustrated in the following- 
passage, quoted by the Edinburgh Review, with full approba- 
tion, from a Report of the African Institution, for the year 
1815. " In what country, accursed with slavery, is this sink- 
ing fund of mercy, this favour of the laws to human redemp- 
tion, juanummion, taken away! Where, by an opprobrious 
reversal of legislative maxims, ancient and modern, do the 
lawgivers rivet, instead of relaxing, the fetters of private 
bondage, stand between the slave and the liberality of his 
master, by prohibiting enfranchisements, and labour as much 
as in them lies, to make that dreadful, odious state of man, 
which they have formed, eternal.-' Shame and horror must 
not deter us from revealing the truth. It is in the dominions 
of Great Britain. This abuse has been reserved for assem- 
blies, convened by the British crown, and subject to the con- 
trol of Parliament." 

In the article on Birbeck, the negro-slavery of the United 
States is spoken of, and with great truth, as existing " in a 
form by far the most mitigated^'''' and it is unanswerably aksed, 
" Who can compare the state of the slave in the sugar islands 
with that in North America.''" In the article of the 50th 
number, on the general Registry of slaves, all idea of emanci- 
pating those of the British West Indies is peremptorily dis- 
claimed, in the name of the English abolitionists; and the 
Reviewer adds, " Unprepared for freedom as the unhappy 
victims of our oppression and rapacity now are, the attempts 
to bestow it on them at once, could only lead to their own aug- 
mented misery, and involve both master and slave in one common 
rwiw." The sagacity which provided this just reflection in 
favour of Great Britain and the West India legislature, might 
have discovered the same apology for the southern states of 
America, and arrested the unqualified sentence pronounced 
upon them. 

In truth, all this sudden pother about the bare continued 
existence of domestic slavery in this country, may be at once 
understood to be mere parade, if not artifice, on a reference 
to the tenor of the article in the first number of the Review, 



238 HOSTILITIES of the 

PART I. concerning the Sugar Colonies. The object of that article 
v-^'^^'^-' was to show, (hat " the subdivision of the negroes of the 
West Indies, under the power of masters armed with abso- 
lute power," had become an indispensable policy for Great 
Britain; that "the regulation of the treatment of the slaves" 
ought to be left to the colonial legislatures; and, principally, 
that Great Britain should assist the consular government of 
France (alias Bonaparte) in the attempt to reduce the negroes 
of St. Domingo to their previous state of bondage; to "their 
cane-pieces, coffee-grounds and spice- walks." The cham- 
pions of iniiversid emancipation, who now, in the fervour of 
their apostleship, proclaim it to be "the consummation of 
wickedness," on our part, to tolerate even the existence of 
slavery in our southern states, had, then, so little presentiment 
of their vocation, or susceptibility to the impressions which 
slavery, "in (he most mitigaled form," makes upon them 
now, as they contemplate this republic, that they were eager 
for its revival in its severest form, and on a very extensive 
scale, in St. Domingo; because the independence of the ne- 
groes of <hat island seemed to threaten the security of the 
trade which supplied in part "our (the Briiish) fleet with 
seamen and our (the Briiish) exchequer with millions." The 
article in question calculates sanguinely and argumentatively 
the advantage secured to Great Britain, on the supposition 
that " France had completely succeeded in her colonial mea- 
sures, and, with ivhatever perfidy and cruelty, restored the 
slavery of the negroes." And it is curious to remark the lan- 
guage held in relation to the beings, for whose fate with us, so 
profound and resentful a compassion is now expressed. 

" The negroes are truly the Jacobins of the West India 
islands — they are the anarchists, the terrorists, the domestic 
enemy. Against them it becomes rival nations to combine, 
and hostile governments to coalesce. If Prussia and Austria 
felt their existence to depend on an union against the revolu- 
tionary arms in Europe, (and who does not lament that their 
coalition was not more firm and enlightened?) a closer alli- 
ance is imperiously recommended to France, and Britain, and 
Spain, and Holland, against the common enemy of civilized 
society, the destroyer of the European name in the new world." 

" We have the greatest sympathy for the unmerited suffer- 
ings of the unhappy negroes ; we detest the odious traffic which 
has poured their myriads into the Antilles; but we must be per- 
mitted to feel some tenderness for our European brethren, al- 
though they are white and civilized, and to deprecate that incon- 
sistent spirit of canting philanthropy, which in Europe is only 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 



239' 



excited by the rvrongs or miseries of the poor and the jjrojligate; SEC. vii 
and, on the other side of the Jltlantic, is never ivartned but to- v-^--,^-^^ 
wards the savage, the mulatto, and the slave!! 

" Admiltiiig all that has been urged against the planters and 
their African providers, we are much of the opinion which 
Lord Bacon has expressed in the following sentence : — ' It is 
the sinfuUest thing in the world to forsake a plantation once 
in forwardness; for, besides the dishonour, ii is the guiltiness 
of the blood of many commiserable persons '" 

The Edinburgh Review is as much at variance with itself, 
touching the points of the felicity and humanity of Great Bri- 
tain, as in that of her being the dispenser of universal freedom. 
As far as the acknowledgment of overspreading pauperism 
may be considered as an acknowledgment of national wretch- 
edness, we have it in repeated instances. In the 58th number, 
this evil is represented as " the menacing hydra who swells 
so gigantically and stalks so largely over the face of the British 
land." That this hydra had left the land, or had ceased to 
swell and expatiate, when the critic wrote the phrase " it 
would be madness not to admit England to be a very happy 
country," no one acquainted with the progress of her affairs 
could be bold enough to affirm. With respect to her humanity, 
it is strangely emblazoned in the abstracts and opinions which 
the Edinburgh Review has given, of the resistance to the abo- 
lition of the slave trade; of her administration of Ireland and 
India; of her penal code; of the state of her public charities, 
her prisons, her hospitals, and of the character of the ministry 
whom she suffers to remain in power. A single passage, which 
I take from their volume for 1817, may serve to show how 
the critics vindicate, in the detail, the reputation of superior 
humanity which they assert in the gross, for their country: — 
" The condition of pauper lunatics, in public institutions, 
is shown sufficiently, by what has been already said. At pri- 
vate mad-houses, the management of the poor was no better. 
At Talbot's, Bethnal Green, where the number was 230, and 
at Rhodes's, Bethnal Green, where 275 paupers were crowd- 
ed together, there is proof of circumstances that deserve se- 
vere censure. At Miles, Worston, of 486 patients, 300 were 
kept wholly without medical attention to their mental disor- 
der. The case is nearly the same throughout the whole of Eng- 
land; and the sheriff of Edinburghshire states, that " in no 
instance did he find a pauper lunatic treated with kindness; in 
several, marked inhumanity was observable." 

In remarking, in reference to the United States, that "•it is 
not pleasant to emigrate to a country of changes and revoln- 



240 HOSTILITIES OP THE 

vwi'V I. tion,^' the saine critics add, (o enforce their observation-" 
'^'^'^''^^i^ "then we have a parliament of inestimable value." In con- 
firmation of this discovery, I will appeal to the authority of 
a late leader of the party to which they belong, — a man 
whose superlative judgment and candour they have celebrated 
without bounds. 

Sir S. Romilly said — * "Let us recollect that we are the parliament 
which, for the first time in the history of this country, twice suspended 
the habeas corpus act in a period of profound peace. Let us recollect 
that we are the confiding' parliament which entrusted his majesty's 
ministers with the authority emanating; from that suspension, in expec- 
tation that when it was no longer wfuUcd, they would call parliament 
together to surrender it into their hands — which those ministers did 
not do, although they subsequently acknowledged that the necessity 
for retaining that power had long ceased to exist. Let us recollect that 
we are the same parliament which consented to indemnify his majesty's 
ministers for the abuses and violations of the law of which they had 
been guilty, in the exercise of the authority vested in them. Let us 
recollect that we are the same parliament which refused to inquire into 
the grievances stated in the numerous petitions and memorials with 
which our table groaned — that we turned a deaf ear to the complaints 
of the oppressed — that we even amused ourselves with their sufferings. 
Let us recollect that we are the same parliament which sanctioned the 
use of spies and informers by .he British government — debasing that 
government, once so celebrated for good faith and honour, Into a con- 
dition lower In character than that of the ancient French police. Let. 
us recollect that we are the same parliament which sanctioned the issu- 
ing of a circular letter to the magistracy of the country, by a secretary 
of state, urging them to hold persons to bail for libel before an indict- 
ment was found. Let us recollect that we are the same parliament 
which sanctioned the sending out of the opinion of the king's attoi-ney- 
general and the king's solicitor-general, as the law of the land Let 
us recollect that we are the same parliament which sanctioned the 
shutting of the ports of this once hospitable nation to unfortunate fo- 
reigners flying from persecution in their own country. This, Sir, i» 
what we have done ; and we are about to crown all by the present most 
violent and most unjustifiable act (the alien act) >Vho our successors 
maybe I know not; but God grant that this country may never see 
another parliament as regardless of the liberties and rights of the peo- 
ple, and of the principles of general justice, as this parliament has 
been!" 

As an American, I may be excused, if, yielding to the pro- 
vocation of such language as that of the Edinburgh Review, 
1 dwell a little longer, in this place, upon the evidence of the 
more perfect freedom and tender humanity of Great Britain, 
which is to be collected from other sources. It has been the 
uniform cry of the leading members of the opposition in par- 
liament, as well as of the Scottish journal, that the ministry 
could at any time find a majority to enable them to suspend 
the habeas corpus act; and the same authorities have concurred 
in the asseriions that when the habeas corpus act was suspend- 

* Debate of June 15, 1818, House of Commons. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 



241 



ed, there was no diflference between the government of Great SF.C vil. 
Britain and the rule of the most despotic sovereign; that the ^'■^'^'^**»' 
power which a minister had of committing to prison on such 
occasions, was quite as great and as dangerous, as that of the 
lettrcs de cachet, so celebrated in the annals of France. The 
last British parliament, dissolved in 1818, suspended the ha- 
beas corpus twice — in a time of profound peace with foreign 
nations, Lord Castlereagh averring on the second occasion, 
that unless the measure were adopted, " a bloody and disastrous 
catastrophe was to be expected," 

The state of things during the suspension will be made suf- 
ficiently known, by a few quotations from the debates in Parlia- 
ment on the subject, and will show the real value of the boast 
for England, that "the greatest lord dare not lay a finger upon 
the meanest peasant." 

Lord Holland said (Feb. 19lh, 1818) "that forty British subjects had 
been, during the suspension of 1817, immured in prisons and discharged 
witl'out any trial." 

Lord A. Hamilton said (Feb. 10th, 1818) "that government had 
avowedly employed spies and informers,* who, it was generally ad- 
mitted, had, in many cases, fomented the evil which it was the object 
to counteract. And he begged now to notice the lamentable condition 
to which suspected persons, innocent or guilty, were thus reduced in 
this frank and free country. Any man was liable, on the information of 
these fomenting instead of detecting spies — out of malice or to earn 
their pay — to be taken by secret warrant — to secret imprisonment — to 
di.stant gaol — all access denied him 'for fear of tampering' — a law 
officer to threaten or bribe — some accomplice to give agreeable evi- 
dence — under such circumstances, what chance had he of bare justice, 
much less of successfully encountering his enemies. Such proceedings 
were in direct opposition to all that they had been accustomed to vene- 
rate in the British constitution." 

Mr. Fazakerley said (Feb. 11th, 1818) "that during the suspension 
of the habeas corpus, the powers with which it invested government 
were by no means sparingly used. The gaols were filled with suspect- 
ed individuals, apprehended probably on the information of spies; and 
many persons were thus, in all probability, made the victims of the 
crimes of others. The various provinces witnessed the novel sight, of 
state prisoners, itinerant state prisoners, carried about from one place 
to another. Not that alone — they saw them loaded with irons and 
placed in close confinement." 

Sir F. Burdett observed (March 11th, 1818) "that no contradiction 
had been attempted of the allegation, that men who had not been 
found guilty of any offence — who were merely accused, and, it was to 
be presumed, wi'ongfully, as they were subsequently discharged, — 
were confined in solitary cells, and loaded with irons. In one instance 

* The Earl of Westmoreland, one of the ministry, observed, in the 
House of Lords, 5th March, 1818, "that spies and informers had, from 
the earliest periods of history, been the objects of popular dislike. 
But he believed that no government had ever existed by which they 
had not been used, and that hard'v any conspiracy or treason had ever 
been detected and punished without their aid." 

Vol. J — Hh 



S42 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 



PART I. two of these unfortunate individuals were chained together, compelled 
\^-\'^^^ mutually to bear all the infirmities of human nature; a most inhuman 
practice, and one to which a tyrant of old is said to have resorted as to 
a refinement of cruelty." 

Sir S. Romilly referred to "the petitions of the two booksellers at 
Warring'ton, who being charged with no higher offence than the pub- 
lishing of a libel, had had their houses searched, their books and papers 
seized, and had been themselves loaded with irons 'ike felons, and 
committed to the house of correction, and kept to hard labour, before 
any trial had taken place." 

" There was another case of the same kind," he continued, "but of 
8til1 greater cruelty It was the case of a man of the name of Swin- 
dells, whose house had been broken open in the dead of night, and 
his books and papers seized His wife was at the time far advanced 
in her pregnancy; the terror produced a premature labour, which 
caused the death of herself and of the child ; and another infant, the 
only remains of the unhappy man's family, was, when he was dragged 
to gaol, conveyed to the parish workhouse, and from thence, in a short 
time, to the parish burying ground. The man, however, had been 
guilty of no crime. His family was destroyed — he was himself dis- 
charged from prison, impoverished, ruined, a widower, and childless, 
because some unfounded charge had been brought against him." 

Lord Holland said (Feb. 27th, 1818) "that the noble duke who had 
introduced the present bill (indemnity bill) had treated the subject 
ratlier lightly, by saying, that the government under the suspension act 
*had merely abstracted a few individuals, for a time, from society.' 
So then, you take men from their family, friends, and employments ; 
you immure them in dungeons; you doom them to solitary confine- 
ment for months ; you e.xpose their persons to every species of hard- 
ship, and their characters to every kind of suspicion, and you call this 
' only abstracting a few individuals from society for a time.' " 

In March, 1817, an act was passed by the Parliament, — 
"the seditious meetings bill," — declaring in the case of any 
public meeting, the punishment of death without benefit of 
clergy, for non-compliance with the order of a simple magis- 
trate to disperse. At that period, there were no less than two 
hundred crimes, besides murder, treason, and burglary, legally 
punishable with death; and sixty of them had been made 
capital in the reign of George III.; seventeen of these by one 
act; and, of the number, one was for shooting a man; another 
the killing of a rabbit; a third, trying to kill a man in his bed; 
and a fourth, cutting down heads of fish-ponds. To this list 
of capital offences may be added cutting a hop-bine, or an or- 
namental tree in gentlemen's grounds; going to a masquerade 
with the face blacked, and many others of a similar cast which 
are detailed in the speeches of Sir Samuel Romilly and Sir 
James Mackintosh, on the British penal code. 

By (he Marriage Act five capital felonies are created in one 
line. From official evidence presented to the House of Com- 
mons, it appears, that nineteen persons, and occasionally 
twenty-one, have been executed on the same day in London. 
We have an instance, within the three years last past, of a 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 243 

woman of the name of Mary Ryan, who had assisted her hus- sec. vii. 
band in an attempt to escape from Newgate, being brought to Vi^^v^^i^ 
the bar for this offence, a few hours after she saw him carried 
to execution; and tried and condemned with her infant at her 
breast, notwithstanding, as Sir James Mackintosh stated in 
the House of Commons, that she was, from the delirium of 
her grief, as incapable of proceeding on her defence, or of ex- 
tenuating her act, as if she were in a state of confirmed insa- 
nity. Mr. Scarlett, a distinguished barrister, and member of 
the House of Commons, assorted, in his place, without contra- 
diction, (on the 2d March, 1819,) that if there was any coun- 
try more disgraced by sanguinary enactments than another, it 
was England. To illustrate lurther the recklessness of the 
legislature in such enactments, and the nature of the admoni- 
tion to which it has remained insensible, I will extract from 
the parliamentary history, part of a speech delivered in the 
House of Commons by a member of high standing, the 13th 
of May, 1777, on the occasion of a bill for the better securing 
dock yards, &c. by the punishment of death. 

Sir William Meredith said, 

"Had it been fairly stated, and specifically pointed out, what 
the mischief of coining silver in the utmost extent is, the hang- 
ing bill on that subject might not have been so readily adopted; 
under the name of treason it found an easy passage. I indeed, 
have always understood treason to be nothing less than some 
act or conspiracy against the life or honour of the king, and 
the safety of the state; but what the king or state can suffer 
by my taking now and then a bad sixpence, or a bad shilling, 
I cannot imagine. By this nickname of treason, however, 
there lies at this moment in Newgate, under sentence to be 
^itrnf atoe, a girl just turned of 14; at her master's bidding 
she hid some whitewashed farthings behind her stays, on 
which the jury found her guilty as an accomplice with her 
master in the treason. The master was hanged last Wednes- 
day; and. the faggots all lay ready for her; no reprieve came 
till just as the cart was setting out, and ihe girl would have 
been burnt alive on the same day, had it not been for the 
humane but casual interference of Lord Weymouth. Good 
God! Sir, are we taught to execrate the fires of Smithfield, 
while we are lighting them now to burn a poor harmless child 
for hiding a whitewashed farthing! And yet this barbarous 
sentence, which ought to make men shudder at the thought of 
shedding blood for such trivial causes, is brought as a reason 
for more hanging and burning." 



2U 



HOSTILITIES OF THL 



PART I. " When a member of Parliament brings in a new hanging 
'-^'-^'''^^ law, he begins with mentioning some injury that may be done 
to private property, for which a man is not yet liable to be 
hanged, and then proposes the gallows as the specific, infalli- 
ble means of cure and prevention; but the bill in its progress 
often makes crimes capital, that scarce deserve whipping. 
For instance, the shop-lifting act was to prevent bankers^ and 
silver-smiths', and other shops, where there are commonly 
goods of great value, from being robbed; but it goes so far, 
as to make it death to lift any thing off a counter with an 
intent to steal. Under this act, one Mary Jones was executed, 
whose case I shall just mention: it was at the time when 
press warrants were issued on the alarm about Falkland's 
Islands. The woman's husband was pressed; their goods 
seized for some debts of his, and she, with two small child- 
ren, turned into the streets a-begging. It is a circumstance 
not to be forgotten, that she was very young, (under nineteen) 
and most remarkably handsome. She went to a linen-dra- 
per's shop, took some coarse linen off the counter, and slipped 
it under her cloak; the shopman saw her, and she laid it 
down: for this she ivas liangcd! Her defence was, (I have 
the trial in my pocket) ' That she had lived in credit, and 
wanted for nothing, till a press-gang came and stole her hus- 
band from her; but since then, she had no bed to lie on; no- 
thing to give her children to eat; and they were almost naked; 
and perhaps she might have done something wrong, for she 
hardly knew what she did.' The parish officers testified to 
the truth of this story; but it seeras, there had been a good 
deal of shop-lifting about Ludgate; an example was thought 
necessary, and this woman was hanged for the comfort and 
satisfaction of some shopkeepers in Ludgate-street. When 
brought to receive sentence, she behaved in such a frantic 
manner, as proved her mind to be in a distracted and despond- 
ing state; and the child was sucking at her breast when she set 
out for Tyburn.'''' 

'' But for what cause was God's creation robbed of this its 
noblest work? It was for no injury; but for a mere attempt 
to clothe two naked children by unlawful means. Compare 
this, with what the state did, and with what the law did. 
The state bereaved the woman of her husband, and the child- 
ren of a father, who was all their support; the law deprived 
the woman of her life, and the children of their remaining 
parent, exposing them to every danger, insult, and merciless 
treatment, that destitute and helpless orphans suffer. Take 
all the circumstances together, I do not believe that a fouler 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 245 

murder was ever commiltcd against law, than the murder of SEC.vii. 
this woman by law. Some who hear me, are perhaps blam- ^-^'^^""^^ 
ing the judges, the jury, and the hangman; but neitiier the 
judge, jury nor hangman are to blame; they are but ministe- 
rial agents; the true hangman is the member of parliament; 
he who frames the bloody law is answerable for ail the blood 
that is shed under it. I cannot find in history any example of 
such laws as ours, except a code that was framed at Alliens 
by Draco." 

Not merely the act of killing, but the mere attempt to kill 
game at night, in an enclosed place, is felony subject to trans- 
portation for seven years, under the monstrous system oi' game 
laws. In 1816, according to official returns made to Parlia- 
irient, twelve hundred persons were immured in various parts 
of the kingdom, for oflt-nces against those laws, to the utter 
ruin and overwhelming distress of many hundreds of poor 
families. The preservation of game for the tables of the rich, 
is the equivalent for this mass of human misery, which, at the 
same time, confessedly leads to a depravation of morals among 
the lower orders, considerably greater in the proportion. 

One of the most respectable British Journals, Bell's Weekly 
Messenger, June 22d, 1818, holds this language : 

" We have often had occasion to say, and we shall repeat 
it, that in no country in the world is the revenue so mercilessly 
collected and enforced as in England. In no country in the 
world is less conceded to private distress." The critics of 
Edinburgh can hardly claim for Scotland an exemption from 
this last reproach, if we are to credit the details given in the 
following extract from the "Proceedings of the House of Com- 
mons" for the 30lh April, 1818. 

"Mr. Findlay rose to move for a return of the number of 
prisoners confined for small debts in the several prisons of 
Scotland. The House, he was persuaded, could hardly ima- 
gine the degree of misery which the prisoners alluded lo were 
condemned to suffer, and when the numbers who thus suflered 
were taken into account, combined with the insignihcant debts 
for which they suffered, its astonishment must be excited, 
while its feelings must be severely afflicted. In the prisons 
of Glasgow alone, there were last year no less than ninety- 
three persons confined for sums under one pound, and it was 
to be recollected that not one of those was likely to come out 
of prison, without having his morals polluted by the peisons 
he was obliged to associate with, while in prison. The whole 
number of prisoners thus confined in all the Scottish prisons, 
amountedj he had reason to believe, to several hundreds, while 



24G HOSTILITIES OF THE 

PAHT I he apprehended that those confined for sums under ^5» 
^■^"'*'^^^ amounted to some thousands. Ue had also to observe that 
none of these poor prisoners were enlitled to any prison allow- 
ance or succour, until ten days after their committal, while 
the receipt of each afterwards was only 4d. per day. Yet 
the creditor could not commit one of these prisoners, without 
expending ten shillings, nor could the debtor be released with- 
out paying six shillings." 

Some more extracts from the parliamentary debates of the 
two last years, will restore the balance between England and 
our southern states, according to the mode of account opened 
by the Edinburgh Review, in the article on Fearon's Travels. 

Lord R. SeyrtiDur observed (June 17th, 181") "that gentlemen not 
conversant with parish workliouscs, were not aware how harshly tlie 
pau|)er lunatics were treated in them. To prevent their escape, they 
were consigned to the constant wear of the strait waistcoat, and this 
being, of all instruments of personal i-estraint, the most heating and 
irritating, the poor lunatic in it becomes clamorous and noisy ; when to 
prevent his annoying his neighbour by his noise, the lancet was applied 
to him, by which he was not unfrequently reduced to a state of exhaus- 
tion " 

Mr. Bennet presented (Feb. 1st, 1819) "a petition from Dr. Halloran, 
now under sentence of transportation for seven years, for forging a 
fiank to a letter, complaining of the hardships and cruelties to which 
he was exposed. This case," the honourable member observed, " had 
excited a good deal of interest, and very naturally, from the dispropor- 
tion between the ofl'ence and the penalty, and in reply, it was said that 
Dr. Ilalloran's character was very questionable, and that he was no 
clergyman, &.c. If the individual had assumed a character to which he 
was not entitled, why was he not prosecuted accordingly P but as the 
case now stood, it would appear as if the man were tried for one thing, 
and punished an account of another. After mentioning the severe 
treatment to which l)r H. had been exposed before trial, in being con- 
fined among the most horrible characters, the honourable member pro- 
ceeded to give an account of the convict vessel in which this individual 
was now confined ; a statement, which he begged the House to under- 
stand, he made from his own personal observation. Dr. H. was con. 
veyed to the hulks in an open boat, when extremely ill, and left in what 
was called a cabin, but what he (Mr, B ) siiould term a liole or dungeon, 
for nineteen hours, without any one going to him, saying nothing of the 
absence of medical aid; he was placed in a hole or dungeon with twenty 
other convicts — the division being twelve leet square In this hole or 
dungeon were cribs six and a half feet long and five and a half feet 
brf)ad; and into one of these cribs six human beings were stowed. 
Here they passed the night without the op])ortunity of turning. 

Tlie honouiable member added, that when he examined this vessel, 
he was compelled to have the aid of a candle ; and he not only found 
the cabins limited and confined, as already described, but they were 
dirty and loathsome in the extreme. Such a sight was abominable to a 
country callmg itself Cliristian, and particularly so to a government that 
was peculiarly Christian. The description of the inside of a black 
slave ship had recently excited a good deal of interest, not only in Eng- 
land, but thr'nighout Europe. But what would the house say when they 
learned that the inside of this luhiie slave ship was worse than that of a 
black slave ship. According to the section of the latter vessel, the 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 247 

blacts had one foot six inches breadth of reposinp; room ; but the white SEC. VII. 
slave ship on'y ofiV-red oni^ foot one inch. lit. dtscribcd what he had ■ ^ y- -^_. 
seen — iwp'edg-ed hiniself for the truth of what he staled." 

Mr B. Bathurst (one of the ministry) "did not mean to deny, that 
there might he merit due to the lionoiirable member \'vv his acti\e and 
personal interference. Kespecting the conditions of the \ essels. tliosc 
who were condemned to them must expect many jirivations and hard- 
ships, and the ships xvere snch as had long- been used. The arguments 
were therefore against tlie system, not against the particularcase. The 
convict ships were now fitted up in the way in which they aiways had 
been" 

Mr Bennct said (April 3d, 1819) "the House was aware that llches- 
ter returned two members to parliament; it was a patronised place ; or, 
in other words, if he might be permitted to use them, it was the pro- 
perty of a particular family. It appeared from the petition which he 
held in his hands, tliat the proprietor thought a small number of con- 
stituents more advantageous; and, to accomplish this object, he had 
pulled down a number of houses, by which about one hundred fami- 
lies had been driven from their homes, and were received into a sort of 
temporary poor-house, where they were sheltered for a time, yet only 
eighteen or twenty of them had been paupers, the rest maintaining 
themselves by honest industry. Notice was however given, in conse- 
quence of prevailing political dissensions, that these unhappy families 
Woidd be deprived of even that slielter; the parish resisted, and an 
ejectment being brought, they were f;nally turned out ; thus one him- 
dred and sixty-three men, women, and children, from extreme infancy 
to extreme age, had been driven into the open streets in the most in- 
clement season of the year; some had screened themselves from the 
cokl, with straw and hurdles; some had taken refuge in open stalls or 
in the neighbouring fields; and a considerable number of old and yoimg 
of both sexes, decrepit old people with helpless infants and women in 
the last stage of pregnancy, had been huddled together in the Town 
Hall without distinction. The unroofing of houses had been heard of 
as an expedient of exclusion ; but it remained for the agents of the 
proprietor of this borough, to drive a man, his wife, and five children 
from their dwelling, by filling the upper floors with dung and filth, 
which oozed and dripped through the ceilings." 

7. Few of the persons who may have followed me thu5? 
far in this section, will, I apprehend, any longer doubt that 
"the vice of impertinence" has " crept" into the councils of 
the Edinburgh Review, as well as into the British cabinet; 
that it has actually " shared in the odious, miserable, vulgar 
spirit of abuse" which ir alleges the opposite political sect to 
be "fond of displaying against America;" that it has never 
even appeared to undertake her defence, but from party feel- 
ings and views; and that by perpetually contradicting itself 
when treating of her concerns or those of England, it has 
forfeited all claim to authority, on either side of the question. 
Its readers may still recollect how severely Cobbett was han- 
dled, in the 20th number, for the " versatility of his succes- 
sive doctrines;" and they will readily apply the following 
paragraphs, with which it concluded its collation of those 
doctrines. 



248 HOSTILITIES OF THE, &C. 

PART I. " Now, what is it that we infer from this strange alterna- 
'--*^/-«»»-^ tion of praise and blame in the pages of Mr. Cobbett? Why, 
that nobody should care much for either; that they are be- 
stowed from passion or party prejudice, and not from any 
sound principles of judgment; and that it must be the most 
foolish of all things, to take our impressions from a man 
whose own opinions have not only varied, but been absolutely 
reversed, within these four years." 

'' By (he uncharitable, such a man will always be regarded 
as a professional bully, without principle or sincerity — whose 
services may be bought by any one who will pay their price 
to his avarice or other passions; — and the most liberal must 
consider him as a person without any steadiness or depth of 
judgment; — accustomed to be led away by hasty views and 
occasional impressions; — entitled to no weight or authority, 
in questions of delicacy or importance; — and likely to be 
found in arms against his old associates, on every material 
change in his own condition, or that of the country." 



349 



SECTION VIII. 



THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 



1. The Quarterly Review is an avowed, implacable enemy, SEC.Vin. 
and somewhat more important to us in its hostilities than the '^■^'■^■'^^>'' 
Edinburgh, on account of its intimate connexion with the Bri- 
tish government. It has constantly argued upon the general 
question of American concerns, by a reference to the single 
class of exceptions, and taken as the ground of universal 
reprobation, those partial irregularities in morals and manners, 
which are to be found in every country, and which, if they 
were sufficient to warrant the charge of barbarism or depra- 
vation against a whole nation, would be equally competent to 
prove that there is no civilization nor virtue left on the earth. 

Mr. Burke said, in his speech on the Conciliation with Ame- 
rica — " I do not know the method of drawing up an indict- 
ment against a whole people. I cannot insult and ridicule 
the feelings of millions of my fellow creatures. I am not 
ripe to pass sentence on the gravest public bodies entrusted 
with magistracies of great authority and dignity, and charged 
with the safety of their fellow-citizens, upon the same title 
as a member of the British parliament." What this elevated 
and enlightened personage thus declared himself incompetent 
to perform, is the frequent and favourite achievement of a 
junto of poets and politicians in London, who profess to be 
of the number of his most faithful disciples and enthusiastic 
admirers. What he pronounced to be " for wise men, not 
judicious; for sober men, not decent; for minds tinctured 
with humanity, not mild and merciful;" they can practise 
without shame, even with ostentation, towards the same coun- 
try^ the vilification of which occasioned his remarks. 

Opinions utterly repugnant to each other; the most intem- 
perate and incautious sallies of hate and jealousy; allegations 
so exorbitant as at once to betray and defeat the purpose of 
the writers, characterize the articles of the Quarterly Review 
which relate to the United States. At the same time, nothing 
is to be found in them of the judgment, humour, knowledge, 
and elocution, which recommend other parts of the Journal 

Vol. I.~I i 



250 HOSTILITIES OP THE 

PARTI. The Edinburgh Review is jocose at our expense through 
^-^"'^'^^tm/ pertness and arrogance; the Quarterly from national fears 
and monarchical antipathy; and the leer of the one is, accord- 
ingly, only smirking, while that of the other is Sardonic. 

It was utterly unworthy of men of high rank in the world 
of literature and criticism; of political teachers of the loftiest 
pretensions; of wits claiming to be the successors of the Swifts 
and Arbuthnots; to appear speculating, and deciding, and jest- 
ing upon a great country, like America, with such manuals as 
the travels of Ashe, Janson, Parkinson, Fearon, illiterate and 
interested slanderers, for whom they could not conceal their 
own hearty contempt, and whose publications, on any other 
subject, they would have cast from them in disdainful silence. 
If it had become necessary, for state purposes, such as the 
prevention of emigration, the weakening of a contrast unfa- 
vourable to the British order of things, and the counteraction of 
a dangerous influence with the nations of the continent, — or for 
the gratification of a prurient wit, a restless arrogance, or pri- 
vate political pique, — that the United States should be reviled 
and derided, self-respect and sound policy exacted an exertion 
of patience to await, or of ingenuity to contrive, some other 
occasion than those afforded by reports, the whole cast and 
tone of which, betrayed to the world, the insufficiency and 
venality of the authors. The British reviewers would have 
consulted their own dignity, and the important object of plau- 
sibility in their expositions of our character and condition 
more, had they resorted altogether for texts even to the news- 
papers written among us by " the expatriated Irishmen and 
Scotchmen," of whom the Edinburgh Journal speaks, rather 
than to books coarsely manufactured in London, out of the 
meanest and flimsiest materials brought thither by disappointed 
or stipendiary Englishmen, whose pursuits and views made it 
impossible, for any reflecting person to believe, that they had 
possessed either the opportunity, capacity, or inclination to 
represent the Americans justly and fairly. Other oracles be- 
sides these; or a course of original, and well-adjusted detrac- 
tion, by argument, assertion, and ridicule, were wanting to 
enable critics, of whatever general authority in their voca- 
tion, to sophisticate the feelings, and bewilder the reason, 
of mankind, in relation to the United States. I question 
whether a single auxiliary has been raised on the continent of 
Europe, for the crusade against the American name, by (he 
passages which I am about to quote from the Quarterly Re- 
view, as samples of its liberality and veracity. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 251 

" An American's first play-thing is a rattle snake's tail — SEC.viil. 
he cuts down a tree on which the wild pigeons have built ^-^~v-^ 
their nests, and picks up a horse load of young birds." 

" Intoxication with the Americans is not social hilarity be- 
trayed into excess; it is too rapid a process for that interval 
of generous feeling which tempts the European on. Their plea- 
sure is first in the fiery stimulus itself, not in its effect — not 
in drunkenness, but in getting drunk." 

" Hence the ferocity with which the Americans decide 
their quarrels: their rough and tumbling: their biting and 
lacerating each other, and their gouging, a diabolical prac- 
tice which has never disgraced Europe, and for which no 
other people have ever had a name."* 

" Living in a semi-savage state, the greater part of the 
Americans are so accustomed to dispense with the comforts of 
life which they cannot obtain, that they have learned to ne- 
glect even those decencies which are within their reach." 

" They have overrun an immense country, not settled it. In 
this as in every thing else, the system of things is forced be- 
yond the age of the colonies.'''' 

" The manners are boorish, or, rather, brutal.**In America 
nothing seems to be respected; there the government is bet- 
ter than the people. The want of decorum among the Ame- 
ricans is not imputable to their republican government; for it 
has not been found in other republics; it has proceeded from 
the effects of the revolutionary war, from their premature in- 
dependence, and from that passion for gambling which infects 
all orders of men, clergy as well as laity, and the legislators as 
well as the people,"* 

" The state of law in America is as deplorable as that of * 
religion, and far from extraordinary."! 

" Two millions of slaves are now smarting under the lash 
in the American states: more than three millions have been 
imported and sold in those pure regions since the defeat of 
Cornwallis."! 



* No. 4. — Article on Holmes's Annals. See Note R. 

j No. 6. — Article on Nortlimore's Washington. 

4: This allegation w:is made in 1809, only 28 years from the period of 
the defeat of CornwaUis : so that on an average more than 100,000 
must have been annually imported! By the census of the population 
of the United States for 1810, the whole number of slaves was then 
only 1,191,364. Therefore, at least two millions must have perished 
among us since 1781 ! It is wonderful that the African Association of 
London has not yet availed itself of this portentous fact, vouched by 
the Quarterly Review, 



252 HOSTILITIES OP THE 

PAilT f. " Every free woman is a voter in America."* 
^.^-v-^ " The judges are not independent; but are subservient to 
the government, and creatures of the President and Senate."! 

'" ]No such character as a respectable country gentleman is 
known in America."^ 

" For the practitioners of law, physic, and surgery, no 
preparatory course of study, no testimonial of compeiency, no 
kind of examination, no particular qualifications, no diploma, 
no license are required. "§ 

" Franklin in grinding his electrical machine and flying 
his kite, did certainly elicit some useful discoveries in a 
branch of science <bat had not much engaged the attention of 
the philosophers of Europe. But the foundation of Franklin^s 
knowledge was laid, not in America, but in London. Be- 
sides, half of what he wrote was stolen from others, and the 
greater part of the other not worth preserv ug. It would be 
rating his moral writings very high to estimate them at the 
same value to the community as his eleemosynary legacy. || 

'•'• The supreme felicity of a true born American is inaction 
of body and inanity of mind. "U 

" Strange as it may appear, the south western part of the 
New World has already begun to consider the north eastern 
OS having passed the meridiem of life, and accordingly given it 
the name of old America."*"* 

" The founders of American society brought to the compo- 
sition of their nation no rudiments of liberal science." 

" America is all a parody — a mimicry of her parents; it is, 
however, the mimicry of a child, tetchy and wayward in 
its infancy, abandoned to bad nurses, and educated in low 
habits." 

In the 4th number we were told — " there has been little 
mixture of nations in America, not more than in England;" 
but in the ^Oth number, we find the reviewer talking of 
America as " a nation derived from so many fathers," and 
explaining " why the thoughtless, dissolute, and turbulent 
of all nations should in commingling^ so neutralize one an- 
other in America, that the result is a people without wit or 
fancy.^^ 

At times, this journal has gone into a train of elaborate 
reasoning to prove the opposition of interests between " Old 
worn out,'''' and " New America," and the certitude of their 
speedy severance. From the same motive — political jea- 



* No. 20. i Ibid. II Ibid. ** Ibid, 

t Ibid. § Ibid. f No. 38. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. " 253 

lousy and alarm — which it has never been able to conceal, it SEC.VIII. 
has dealt in menacing cautions, of which the following will ^^<*~v-*i^ 
serve as an amusing specimen, and disclose the kind of 
comfort which is sought among the ministerial literati of 
London, for ihe increase of our power. 

" It is not in Europe only that the prosperity of Russia is 
likely to be advantageous to the British monarchy. There 
is a nation without the limits of Europe, to whom, for the 
sake of our kindred race and common language, we would 
gladly wish prosperity, but whose hope of elevation is built 
on our expected fall; and who, even now, do not affect to 
conceal the bitterness of their hatred towards the land of their 
progenitors. Already we hear the Americans boasting that 
the whole continent must be their own; that the Atlantic and 
Pacific are, alike to wash their empire, and that it depends 
* on their charity what share in either ocean they may allow to 
our vessels. They unroll their map and point out the dis- 
tance — between Niagara and the Columbia. Let them look 
to this last point well. They will find in that neighbour- 
hood a different race from the unfortunate Indians whom it is 
the system of their government to treat icith uniform harshness ! ! 
They will find certain bearded men with green jackets and 
bayonets, whose flag is already triumphant over the coast from 
California to the straits of Anian, who have the faculty 
wherever they advance, of conciliating and even civilizing 
the native tribes to a degree which no other nation has at- 
tempted, and whose frontier is more likely to meet theirs in 
Louisiana, than theirs is to extend to the Pacific. These are 
not very distant expectations, and theij are not unfavourable to 
England:' (April, 1818). 

2. Our backwardness in the production of good books, has 
not been quite so favourite and frequent a topic with the 
Quarterly Review, as the other assailable points more in the 
line of the political object. In the midst of the first general 
denunciation of this country,* we find it admitted, we may 
presume inadvertently, that " it is no great reproach to the 
Americans if they have not yet done more in literature; and 
that more ought not to be expected from their circumstances 

and population." Nevertheless, the same writers have not^^ 

failed to ring all the changes upon the works of Dwight, Bar- 
loiv, and '• Mr. Chief Justice Marshall."" The course pur- 
sued with three of the American publications, — Inchlquins's 

* Revie'v of Holme's Annals. — No. 4. 



254 HOSTILITIES OF THE 

PART I. View of the United States, the Travels of Lewis and Clarke. 
'^^'-v-'^^ and Colden's Life of Fulton — to which they afterwards ex- 
tended their notice, is marked by trails as discreditable and 
disgusting as individuate any case in the annals of British cri- 
ticism. 

The " View of the United States" was a mere vindication 
of the native country of the author from the aspersions cast 
upon it abroad; it simply represented the main features of 
our character and condition; pourtrayed with an imp.irtial 
hand some of our most conspicuous statesmen; and asserted 
the merits of two of the American works, which had been 
traduced in Enghind. It attempted no reprisals upon ihe 
English aggressors; used no harsh language; decried no Eu- 
ropean nation. It did not even run into an indiscriminate 
panegyric of the United States, though it professed to be a 
" favourable view of them," which might be considered as at 
least pardonable, after so much had been written in Europe 
on the opposite side. Its general complexion argued liberal 
studies, and it was reconmiended by a diction, liable indeed 
to some exceptions, but, on the whole, classical, elegant, and 
vigorous. In short, there was enough about it to soHen the 
national prejudices, and even to win the praise, of a European 
critic of ordinary liberality. The Quarterly Review, how- 
ever, assailed this, in itself inoffensive and commendable 
performance, with the utmost asperity; i! reviled the author 
personally; misrepresented his opinions and misquoted his 
language; and took occasion to rake in all the lampoons and 
gazettes already noticed, for materials, out of which it framed 
what it called " a correct portrait of the people of the United 
States," but what no perspicacious and generous mind can 
see in any other light than as a malignant libel, and hideous 
caricature. 

The " History of Lewis and Clarke's Expedition" had not 
merely nothing in it, to give umbrage, or to rouse national 
antipathies, but seemed to prefer irresistible claims upon the 
favour of all the friends of knowledge, and to leave scope 
only for the most generous sympathies. The book is a sim- 
ple, clear narrative, without reference to any invidious topics; 
and the expedition itself was alike unexceptionable in the 
design, conduct, and results, all of which, indeed, bear a 
salient character of excellence and dignity. It stifled the 
petulance, and extorted the admiration, of the Scottish critics, 
who set the proper example to their brethren of London, by 
pronouncing upon it the following eulogy. 

" We must remark, that this expedition does great credit 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 



255 



both to the government by which it was planned, and to the SEC. Viii, 
persons by whom it was executed. The good sense, activity ^.^•^-/-^fc^ 
and perseverance of the commanders cannot be too much 
commended; their treatment of the natives was humane and 
kind; and though their mission was in its intention concilia- 
tory, yet this purpose could not have been carried into effect 
but by men of much good temper and sound understanding, 
considering how long they were exposed to the vexations aris- 
ing from the suspicion, caprice, and levity of savages. The 
great harmony that seems to have prevailed, the spirit, steadi- 
ness, and exertion in the midst of so much hardship and dan- 
ger, are highly meritorious; and exhibit a band of active and 
intrepid men, wiiich no country in the world would not be 
proud to acknowledge." 

This was a strain worthy of the theory of the critical in- 
stitute, but the spirit of the Quarterly Review could not be 
exorcised as completely. It relented so far as to admit that 
Lewis and Clarke " travelled near 9000 miles — the longest 
river voyage undertaken since that of Orellana;" and that 
" they performed with equal ability, perseverance, and suc- 
cess, one of the most arduous journies that ever was accom- 
plished." Acknowledged merits of such magnitude called 
for tenderness to the reputation of the individuals in all points; 
for the kindest interpretation of appearances in the least doubt- 
ful; yet the English Reviewer did not hesitate scornfully to 
intimate, that they took pleasure in the obscenities of the In- 
dians of the Missouri;* and this affront is given upon no 
other foundation than that those obscenities are related. The 
relation, too, is in Latin, uncouth Latin indeed; but such as 
it is, it evinces, in the use of this veil, a refinement of feeling, 
the opposite of the imputed grossness. Let the voyages of 
Captain Cook, Captain Wilson, and other English navigators; 
or the narratives of any of the English travellers among 
savage nations, be consulted, and it will be seen that they are 
much less studious of decorum; and that a charge of the kind 
might be made against them with more plausibility, if we 
admit there could be any colour of reason for making it on 

* "The women of the Aricara Indians prostitute themselves publicly, 
in the intervals of dancing. The writer cannot be charged with oflTend- 
ing decency in describing this abomination, — he has related another not 
less abominable, in Latin, froin respect to decorum, but in both instances it 
is evident that he and his companion -were not men who felt any pain at 
beholding the degradation of/mman nature." The very reverse is evident 
to all who are not of the class of moralists and philanthropists " wil- 
ling to love all mankind, except an American''' 



26G HOSTILITIES OP THE 

PART 1. such a foundation. The personal acquaintance of the two 
'*v-Aw^^ gallant leaders of the American expedition, requires no argu- 
ment to be convinced of iheir uniform elevation of sentiment 
and deportment. 

They were, certainly, unfortunate in the choice of names 
for the natural objects which they were the first to bring to 
the knowledge of the civilized world. But this merit of dis- 
covery, and the sagacity, fortitude, perseverance, exemplary 
temper displayed throughout the expedition, rendered doubly 
venial so inconsiderable a fault. A refined classical taste has 
belonged to very few of the illustrious men to whom we are 
indebted for the enlargement of geographical science; and the 
exploration of the wild creation through which Lewis and 
Clarke penetrated, presented the case, if ever there was one, 
in which the absence of that accomplishment could be consi- 
dered as excusable in itself, or its effects — nay even advan- 
tageous on the whole, and immediately conducive to the more 
perfect achievement of the gigantic enterprise. Instead of 
the gentle and courteous reproof which became the occasion, 
the Quarterly Review made their homely ))omenclature the 
subject of unsparing satire, and turned it into doggerel levelled 
not only agains^t-^i* heroic adventurers, but their country, and 
particularly against the high officers of state with whom the 
expedition originated. If the wretched diatribe to which 
I refer, coarser by far in its texture than the occasion of it; 
too low even for a place in "Coleman's Broad Grins," be- 
longs to the pen of the Author of the Baviad and Moeviad, 
and the Translator of Juvenal; of the scourge of poetasters, 
and the assayer of English verse, it furnishes a striking ex- 
ample of the power of national prejudice and party-devotion, 
to work the most violent and pitiable transformations. How 
capital this stroke at the Americans, on the occasion of their 
disclosing a new world to the gaze of philosophy and the 
march of civilization ! 

"Flow, Little Shallow, flow, andbe thy sti'eam 
Their great example, as it will their theme !" 

And how natural and happy the transition from such wit in 
numbers, to such wit in prose, as the following! — "From 
Big-Muddy, they, the explorers — to borrow a title of Ameri- 
can extraction — proceeded to Jefferson, and with not less feli- 
city to Madison from Little Shallow," &c. 

Before I have done with the article in question, I would 
call attention to two more passages as illustrative of the spirit 
presiding over the American department of the Journal, 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 257 

" It was not long before Jhey (Lewis and Clark) reached SEC Vlir. 
the remotest source of the Missouri, and drank of the fountain v^^'v^*,' 
— a situation not altogether unworthy of being compared with 
that of Bruce at the fountain of the Abyssinian Nile." 

" Langsdorff notices a curious trade which the Americans 
carry on in this article of fire arms on the Norih West Coast. 
He says they send out a gunsmith in every ship, to buy up at 
one place all the guns which want repairing, and sell ihem as 
new pieces at another !" 

I aver, upon the authority of some of the distinguished Ame- 
rican merchants who trade with the North West Coast, that 
this statement, so kindly copied from Langsdorff, is utterly 
false. Were it true, it would not enable us as yet, to dispute 
the palm of fraudulent ingenuity, with our English kinsmen. 
It falls short of such a practice as the following related by 
Mr. Soulhey in " Espriella's Letters;" abetter authority than 
Langsdorif. " A regular branch of trade liere, at Birming- 
ham, is the manufacture of guns for the African market. 
They are made for about a dollar and a half: the barrel is 
filled with water; and, if the water does not come through, it 
is thought proof sufficient: of course they burst when fired., and 
mangle the ivretched negro^ who has purchased them upon the 
credit of English faith., and received them, most probably, as 
the price of human flesh! Ab secret is made of this abominable 
trade; yet the government never interferes; and the persons con- 
cerned in it are not marked, and shunned as infamous.''''* 

The story from Langsdorff is entitled to about the same 
credit as the assertion made in jhe 26ih No. of the Quarterly 
Review, that Captain Porter of the American frigate Essex, 
after losing half his crew, was taken by a ship of inferior force. 
The hardihood of the Reviewer may almosr confound those 
who read the following extract, from the official letter, dated 
30th March,, 1814, of Captain Hillyar of his Majesty's ship 
Phoebe (the antagonist of Porter) to Commodore B^own, sta- 
tioned at Jamaica. " The defence of the Essex, taking into con' 
sideration our great superiority of force, the very discouraging 
circumstances of having lost her main top-mast, and being 
twice on fire, did honour to her defender, and must fully prove 
the courage of Captain Porter." 

The ' Life of Robert Fulton, by Cadwallader D. Colden 
of New York,' has experienced a treatment from these up- 
right critics, more remarkable still, and, if possible, more 

* See also, on this head, Clarkson's History of the Abolition of the 
Slave Trade, Vol. 11. c. iii. 

Vol. L—K k 



25S HOSTILITIES OP THE 

PART I. shameless. The work of Mr. Colden appears as a mere 
'''^'''^^^^'' Biographical Memoir, read before the Literary and Philoso- 
phical Society of New York, conformably to one of the prin- 
cipal ends of that respectable institution. It obtained the shape 
of a book at the request of those to whom it was addressed; 
and the proceeds of its publication, whatever they might be, 
were assigned to the erection of a monument to the memory of 
the iilusirious engineer. The author announced himself, even 
in the title-page, emphatically as his friend, and took charge, 
avowedly, of his panegyric. This, — for one who had known 
hirn in relations of the closest intimacy, and when the deceased 
had left so many titles (o the most solemn commemoration — 
was unexceptionable in itself, and sanctioned, moreover, by 
abundant precedents in the practice of the European nations. 
Mr. Colde.n was not a writer by profession or habit; he be- 
longed to the bar, at which he had established the highest re- 
putation, and fiiied the highest office. He is now mayor of 
the city of New York; a station of great consequence and 
dignity. He is the grandson of the Lieutenant Governor Col- 
den who wrote the celebrated History of the five Indian Na- 
tions, and whose merits and honours in the world of science, 
are second only to those of Franklin, among the men that 
have flourished on the American continent as politicians and 
philosophers.* The biographer of Fulton has shown himself 
worthy of this descent, by an acknowledged, invariable pro- 
bity; a versatile genius; and the assiduous cultivation of the 
sciences and liberal arts in the midst of extensive professional 
engagements, and of arduous municipal duties. It was in mo- 
ments snatched from these, that, to gratify his feelings and the 
wishes of the learned society which ranks him as one of its most 
useful and erudite members, he framed the Memoir in ques- 
tion, with a full conviction, derived from the nearest observa- 
tion, of the reality of the services and qualities which he cele- 
brated: and, whatever he may have claimed of excellence for 
the labours of Fulton, it is impossible he could have been 
more unassuming, or unpretending, as respects his own pro- 
duction. If he has asserted extravagant titles for his subject, it 
is manifestly without any designs, — from no impulses — which 
can lay him open to personal reproach or incivility. The 
tenor of his book proves his competency to his task; in 
point of style, arrangement, and general instructiveness, it is 
all that could be expected or desired for the occasion. 

He was led by the nature of his theme, and the wonders 
of steam-navigation which he witnessed about him, to medi- 

* See note S. 



•BRITISH REVIEWS. 



259 



tate much, and lay the utmost stress, upon the magnitude of SEC.viii. 
its benefits to the human race. It is not surprising that these ^-^--^-"*^ 
should -appear of less consequence and sublimit}', to an ob- 
server in England, where, from the shortness of the distances 
and the facilities of canal navigation, so little, comparatively, 
remained to be done for internal communication; where the 
small steam-boats, plying on the diminutive streams, and 
serving only the purpose of conveying passengers a few miles 
with greater convenience, are so little imposing either to the 
eye or to the imagination. But in America, the actual and 
future scene, in this respect, has an engrossing and transport- 
ing influence, and is of a real importance and magnificence, 
which scarcely leave scope for exaggeration in feeling or repre- 
sentation. 

Mr. Colden saw steam-vessels of four and five hundred tons, 
constructed as commodiously, and furnishing as perfect secu- 
rity for merchandise or passengers, as the ware or the dwel- 
ling-house; overcoming with unexampled velocity the power- 
ful currents of our mighty rivers; multiplying indefinitely on 
the innumerable waters of this vast country, and almost ac- 
complishing the wish of the lover — the annihilation of time 
and space — in the domestic intercourse of North America. 
He could at once extend his view to the southern regions of 
this hemisphere; to the continents of Europe, Africa, and 
Asia, and see in prospect the same prodigies wrought there, 
and the same train of moral and physical advantages ulti- 
mately realized. He had seen a steam-frigate of gigantic size, 
moving on the Hudson with the facility and force of motion, 
and the military faculties, which would assure invulnerability 
to the seaports of his country, and might give a new and de- 
sirable character to maritime warfare.* He had seen, to use 
his own v^ords, "the Paragon, of three hundred and thirty- 
one tons burthen, tow the steam frigate Fulton, which is of 
the burthen of two thousand four hundred and seventy-five 
tons, from the ship yards in the Sound, where she was launch- 
ed, to the dock or the city of Jersey, on the Hudson, where 
she was to receive her machinery, at the rate of four miles 

* " Every one," says Cuvier, in liis brilliant Discourse of 24th April, , 
1816, on the Progress of the Sciences, before the French Institute — 
"every one may see how much this invention of Steam-Boats will sim- 
plify the navigation of our rivers, and how much agriculture will gain 
in men and horses, that may now return to the fields ; but what we may 
be also permitted to descry, and what will, perhaps, be more impor- 
tant, is the revolution to which it will lead in maritime warfare and in 
the power of nations. It is extremely probable that we shall have to 
reckon this among the experiments, that can be said to have changed 
the face of the world." 



^60 HOSTILITIES OF THE 

PART I and an half an hour; the same frigale, propelled by that nia- 
'"'^"'""^^'^ chinery niouf, make a passage to the ocean and back, a dis- 
tance of 53 miles, in eight hours and twenty minuses — the 
Fulton steam boat, which navigates the East river, passing 
daily through Hell-gate against a rapid frequently running at 
the rate of six miles an hour." 

The crossing of the broadest and most rapid rivers, before 
alike dangerous, difficult, and tedious, had been rendered safe, 
easy, and expeditious, by the use of steam ferry-boats, capa- 
ble of earning hundreds of passengers and vehicles at a 
time, and almost any mere burden. 

From these performances, prospects and hopes naturally 
opened upon (he mind of our author, which would have 
warmed any fancy; and sentiments of admiration and grati- 
tude towards Fulton were excited, which cannot appear hy- 
perbolical to an American, especially at this time, when we 
knotv that a steam-ship is oh her passage across the Atlantic; 
and that a fleet of steam-vessels are making their way, with a 
detachment of the army of the United States, to establish a 
post at the Yellow Stone, on the Missouri, in the interior of 
our coniinent, two thousand miles from the mouth of the 
Mississippi. These two facts render it not improbable that, 
by the same means, the passage between Europe and America 
will be made in less time, and with less inconvenience, than 
a journey between Edinburgh and London was accomplished . 
half a century ago; and that a commerce between the Atlantic 
and Pacific Oceans may be maintained, through the Columbia 
and Missouri, with as much certainty and facility, as it is 
between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. 

With such ulterior results as likely, and with the incalculable, 
realized good, before him, Mr. Coldenventuredtosayofthe man 
whom he considered as its immediate, intelligent author, that 
" there could not be found in the records of departed worth, 
the name of a person to whose individual exertions mankind 
are more indebted, nor one which would live farther into 
time, if not robbed of the fame due to superior genius, exerted 
with wonderful courage, industry, perseverance, and success." 
No impartial and reflecting reader could view this declaration 
as extravagant, or fail to approve both of the tone and puiw 
port of the passage which immediately follows in the biogra- 
phy. " If the construction of a bridge, or the formation of a 
canal, has often given a celebrity which has been transmitted 
through many ages, what fame and what gratitude does not he 
deserve, who has furnished a means of transportation which 
may bring the inhabitants of the different quarters of the 
world nearer to each other than, previously, those of the same 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 261 

territory considered themselves; which will spread with a fa- SEC. VIII. 
cility before unknown, the influence of religion, civilization, ^^^^v-^^ 
and the arts; which will bring the whole human species to 
an intimate acquaintance with each other; and will unite 
mankind by the bonds of mutual intercourse." 

Fulton himself had never pretended that he was the first 
projector or inventor of steam-boat navigation; and his bio- 
grapher is far from having ascribed to him this merit. Mr. 
Colden admitted that " some ingenious attempts to propel 
boats by steam had been made long before the time Mr. Ful- 
ton was known to have thought of it;" and that the idea ori- 
ginated with an Englishman, Mr. Jonathan Hulls, who pub- 
lished his scheme in 1737, at London. Our author received 
implicitly the statement respecting Hull's suggestions, which 
he read in Buchanan's " Treatise on Propelling Vessels by 
Steam," a work that appeared in Scotland in 1817. What 
he claimed for Fulton, and what alone Fulton claimed for 
himself, was, his being the first, who, by improvements on 
the mere conceptions or vain attempts, of others, established . 
steam-navigation so as to render it perpetually practicable 
and unboundedly useful — improvements effected not by a 
lucky chance or cunning plagiary, but by a rare combina- 
tion of inventive powers, of mathematical and philosophical 
science, of mechanical knowledge and experience, and of 
intr^jpidity and perseverance. Buchanan, the Scottish writer 
whom I have just mentioned, had owned in his treatise, 
while vindicating the credit of origination for Hulls, that 
"the steam-boats of Fulton were the first that succeeded in a , 
profitable way." A more absolute admission, ratifying fully 
the doctrine of Mr. Colden, has been made in the April num- 
ber of Dr. Thompson's Annals of Philosophy, in an able 
paper on the origin of steam-boats. The writer holds the 
following language. " It is not a little remarkable in the his- 
tory of the arts, and forms a striking instance of the slow and 
progressive steps by which they advance, that that most ele- 
gant and useful discovery, the steam-boat, first brought forward 
in 1736, by Jonathan Hulls of London, and afterwards pub- 
licly investigated and tried by Lord Stanhope and Mr. Miller, 
of Dalswinton, should have been carried to America, and 
there first have changed its character from mere experiment 
to extensive practice and utility^ and that it should again have 
been introduced into Britain upon the experience of Americans^ 
only so lately as the ypar 1813, when it was first employed 
upon the river Clyde." Even the Quarterly Review, in the 
article upon which I am about to animadvert, avows it to be 



262 HOSTILITIES OF THE 

PART I. " beyond all question that Mr. Fulton made considerable ini 
•-,^-v-^ provemenis in the application of the steam-engine to the navi- 
gation of boats;" and adds — ^' It is quite natural that the 
Anif^ricans should uphold the reputation of their own country- 
men. We cannot blame them for it, and some allowance 
may reasonably be made for excess of paneg}ric, in speaking 
of arlists of native growth." 

I have premised all these details, in order to the better un- 
derstanding of the article in question, which I will now cur- 
sorily examine. It begins thus: 

'' Although our readers may be inclined to give us credit 
for some knowledge of our transatlantic brethren, yet we can 
honestly assure them that we were not quite prepared for such 
a sally as this of Cadwallader Golden, Esq." &c. alluding to 
his declaration noticed above of the obligations of mankind to 
Fulton. We have then a series of sneers at the panegyrics 
pronounced upon the engineer by others of his countrymen, 
and at the New York Historical Society. The Reviewers 
themselves sit in judgment upon Fulton, and describe him as 
" a man who possessed just talent enough to apply the inven- 
tions of others to his oion purposes.'''' Mr. Golden is taxed with 
disin^^enuity and misrepresentation, and ever and anon, with 
as much urbanity as wit, styled " Mr. Gadwallader Golden," 
" frierfd Gadwallader," " the conscientious and consistent 
friend," &c. The critics, by way, we must suppose, of teach- 
ing him a lesson of ingenuousness and truth, assume, that he 
had arrogated for Fulton the merit of discovery, in the case of 
the steam-boat, and proceed laboriously to refute the pretended 
doctrine. 

It is unlucky, that in setting out, they could find no stronger 
language in the work of Mr. Golden, than the phrase — "We 
and all the world are indebied to Fulton for the establishment 
of navigation by steam." With the biography in their hands, 
and acquainted, no doubt, with what Buchanan had written, 
they do not scruple to introduce and parade the theory of 
Hulls, in such a way precisely, as if they were the first to 
announce it, and Mr. Golden and America to be confounded 
with the disclosure. They give an account of Mr. Miller's 
experiments, in the year 1787, on the Forth and Glyde 
Canal, which they acknowledge " did not succeed to his 
entire satisfaction;" and they lay great stress upon those of 
one of his assistants, of the name of Symington, who pursued 
his ideas, wiih no better success in the end. We are told by 
them, that Fulton paid a visit to Symington, and examined 
liis boat; and in the same manner, it is affirmed, equally with- 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 263 

out the production of any evidence, in the paper of Thomp- SEC.VIII. 
son's Annals, to which I have referred, that Fulton saw the ^-*-^^-^ 
experiments of Miller — a circumstance highly improbable, 
since Fulton was born only in 1765, and did not leave this, 
his native country, until after his majority. 

The very attempts of the Reviewers to invalidate the claim 
set up for Fulton, tend to show that it is well founded. We 
may admit, as Mr. Golden has done, that Jonathan Hulls was 
the first who thought of using the power of steam for naviga- 
tion;* but it is not pretended that he ever proceeded to apply 
his conception, even so far as to make an experiment. It 
cannot but be perceived by every one conversant with what is 
now in practice, that Mr. Hulls' scheme would not have been 
effectual to drive the tow-boat itself, much less to drag " a 
two-decker." The steerage of balloons, and plans for the 
purpose, have been often suggested; we have seen repre- 
sentations of them, beating to windward under full sail. 
Should the art of governing them be hereafter discovered and 
perfected by the same individual, it will be quite as equita- 
ble to deny him the merit of balloon-navigation, in favour of 
the first speculators, or of the authors of the drawings, as it is 
to detrude Fulton from his pedestal, to substitute Jonathan 
Hulls. 

Patrick Miller never attempted to apply the engine to ves- 
sels. The Reviewers inform us that in a book which he pub- 
lished in 1787, he has said, he had reason to believe that the 
power of the steam-engine might be employed to work the 
wheels, so as to give them a quicker motion, and to increase 
that of the ship. He announced, at the same time, his inten- 
tion to make the experiment, and to communicate the result, 
if favourable^ to the public. No such communication is alleged 
to have been made, and the conclusion is inevitable, that the 
result was not favourable. With respect to Symington's boat, 
the assertion that it was seen by Fulton is wholly gratuitous; 
there is no trace of the fact in the papers of the latter; it is, 
' -h'^wever, not impossible, and will be readily admitted. Mr. 
Colden has furnished proof that Fulton communicated the 
project of a steam-boat to Lord Stanhope, in the year 1793, 
seven years previous. The experiment of Symington on the 
Clyde is mentioned in the biography of Fulton, and it is not 

* This is not, however, precisely the case. Some of the English wri- 
ters claim the merit for captain Savery, who, it is said, publislied the 
idea in 1698, and even proposed wheels over the sides of the boat. 
Hulls took out a patent in 1736, for " towing vessels into harbour by 
means of a boat with paddles, to be worked by steam." 



264 HOSTILITIES OP THE 

PART I. denied in Ibat work, that the American availed himself of the 
'.-rf'-v-^fc^ hints affbrdc*j by the abortive or incomplete experiments of 
his precurscrs. Their very errors may have suggested to him 
(he means of effecting his object. Scarcely one of tlie illus- 
trious men who havelhe credit of noble discoveries, or im- 
provements, in phjsics or in morals, but enjoyed this negative 
kiiid of oid, or the positive advantage of seminal ideas, and 
partial schemes. Sir Isaac Newton was indebted to the ex- 
perimeMts and observations of Kepler, and to the discoveries 
of Grinialdi; Galileo had seen the telescope of Melius: 
Watt profiied of the labours of Newcomen: Dr. Jenner was 
not the first who imagined, or suggested, or tried, the pro- 
phylactic power of the vaccine. There is a striking ana 
logy, in fact, between the cases of Jenner and Fulton: — the 
glory of vaccination is not more justly due to the cne, than 
that of steam-boat navigation to the other. Ths question is 
not who first proposed to connect steam with navigation; but 
who first and completely succeeded in so doing, and enabiei'; 
others to succeed. The world will never consent to exalt the 
genius and merits of him who merely throws out a loose 
hint, or stops short at a diagram, or finishes with an abortive 
experiment, over (hose of the sanguine and accomplished en- 
terpriser, who seizes derelict, and vivifies still-born ideas; who, 
vniting in himself the aptitude to invent, the sagacity to dis- 
tinguish, and the skill to execute, puts the w'orld in lasting 
possession of that, which others had essayed, wiih such results 
cnly as tended to arrest the efforts of industry, and discredit the 
powers of art. 

When the reviewers were dragging forward Mr. Syming- 
ton as the rival of Fulton, and alleging that his boat fully an- 
swered the expectations which had been formed, it would 
^ have been well if they had told us, what those expectations 
were, and how fulfilled. For want of this information from 
them, I am obliged to look elsewhere for it. I find an 
account of Mr. Symington's experiment, in the JournaL 
of the Royal Institution, for 1802; a publication which Co' 
not be suspected of a bias nnfavoural)le to Mr. Symington. 
It is there stated that he ascertained that his boat would 
travel at the rate of two miles and an half an hour; upon 
the placid surface of a canal, be it understood, where no cur- 
rent was 10 be breasted. But 1 will take (he language of the 
Royal Institution itself, that it may be seen how far those 
who ranked among the best judges in England were, at that 
date, from clear ideas of the capacities, or fixed hopes of the 
permanent success, of steam-navigation. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. ^^5 

'' Several attempts have been made to apply the force of SEC.vill. 
tilcam to the purpose of propelling boats in canals^ and there v^"V">«-' 
seems to be no reason to think the undertaking by any means 
liable to insuperable difficulties. 

" An engine of the kind proposed by Mr. Symington, has 
been actually constructed at the expense of the proprietors of 
(he Forth and Clyde navigation, and under the patronage of 
the governor, Lord Dundas; it was tried in December last, 
and it drew three vessels from 60 to 70 tons burden at the 
usual rate of two miles and a half an hour. Mi'. Symington 
is at present employed in attempting still further improve- 
ments, and when he has completed his invention, it may, 
perhaps, ultimately become productive of very extensive uti- 
lity." 

Mr. Fulton's first boat went almost from off the stocks at 
New York, to Albany, a distance of one hundred and sixty 
miles, and performed the voyage with and against the cur- 
rent of the Hudson, at the rate offive miles an hour. When 
her machinery was more perfectly adjusted, she accomplished 
the same passage at the rate of eight miles an hour. The 
vessels built on Mr. Fulton's plan, which are now in opera- 
tion, average ten miles an hour. The difference of speed 
between Mr. Symington's boat and Mr. Fulton's, alone ar- 
gues some material difference in the machinery. The ac- 
count above mentioned, contains a description of Symington's 
boat. It is hardly necessary to add that it differs totally 
from that of Mr. Fulton; or to ask — of what use would be Mr. 
Symington's boat, with a movement of two and a half miles an 
hour, in the American rivers of the south and west, which 
are now so successfully navigated by the boats of Fullon, 
against currents of three and four miles an hour? 

If the experiments made in England were so perfect, it is 
incomprehensible how it happened, that no vessels were con- 
structed, and put in common use, until about five years 
after Fulton's boats were seen in successful operation on the 
Hudson. Nor is it more easy to conjecture, why all the Bri- 
tish boats now in use, are built according to Mr. Fulton's 
plan, and not according to that of Hulls, or Miller, or Sy- 
mington. 

It is pleasant to compare the pretensions set up for Great 
Britain by the Quarterly Review, with the confession of a 
British engineer, Mr. Dodd, a man of eminence in his pro- 
fession, and a skilful architect of steam-boats, — that the first of 
them which succeeded in Great Britain, was built in 181 2; and 
that, although the Americans had given the fullest trial to the 
. Vol. I— LI 



266 HOSTILITIES OF THE 

PART I. British invention during five years previous, it was necessary 
'>^''"^^"^«-' there should be a new one under the eyes of the British nation, 
to inspire confidence, and induce the building of more boats.* 
On the whole, no evidence is to be found of the practical uti- 
lity of the British projects; but there exists the most violent 
presumption to the contrary; and it is impossible, as regards 
England, to resist the force of the interrogation put by Mr. 
Colden — " If sieam-boats had ever been constructed before 
the experiment of Fulton, so near perfection as to show that 
they might be used to their present advantage, can it be be- 
lieved that they would have been abandoned.'"' 

The unanswerable address of an American to a Briton, 
on this subject, is — " You conceived the idea of propelling 
boats by steam, as early as 1698 — you afterwards employed 
yourselves repeatedly in devising methods and making trials 
to carry that idea into effect — yov could never succeed to your 
'satisfaction,' that is, to any advantageous extent — you relin- 
quished your impotent endeavours — one of my countrymen 
appropriated your conception; new modelled your plans; 
scanned and detected your mistakes; and, as you confess, 
changed in America the character of your invention from 
mere experiment to extensive practice and utility: — the steam 
boat issued from his hands as Minerva did from iheJiead of 
Jupiter — a mature creation; you were content to receive it. 
some years afterwards, ' upon the experience of the Ameri- 
cans,' neglecting entirely your own boasted constructions of 
the same name, the utility of which, if not all sufficient for 
you, upon your narrow geographical scale, could be nothing 
for the rest of the world. Far, then, from holding so over- 
weening a language, from taking all the credit, you should 
rather take some shame, to yourselves, that you were not able 
to improve your notions to the point of general utility. If, 
with the advantage of discovery, you accomplished, virtually, 
nothing, in the lapse of more than a century, what must be 
the merit of the stranger who, in America, accomplished 
every thing at the first cast.'' If you did not adopt this mode 
of navigation, until five years after its complete triumph in 
America, and then received it with hesitation and a sort of 
incredulity, when would it have been turned to any account 
among you, had he not established it there .-' How long might 
not the world have remained without this master-piece?" 

* An Historical and Explanatory Dissertation on Steam-Eng'ines and 
Steam-Packets, bv George Dodd, Civil Engineer. London. 3818. See 
Note T. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 969 

If the degree of merit claimed by Fulton could be con- SKC.VIII. 
Jested with success any where, it is in America, for Ameri- v.^-v-^^^ 
cans, who preceded him and the British mechanicians, in the 
attempt to propel vessels by steam. Miller made his experi- 
ments on the Forth and Clyde Canal, and published his book, 
in 1787; Symington put his scheme to the test in the same 
canal in 1801. If Miller, as it is said in Thompson's An- 
nals, communicated his plan to General Washington in 1787, 
an American had previously imparted a more perfect one to 
the general. This person, James Rumsey, of Virginia, con- 
structed a boat to be navigated by steam, in the summer of 
1785, after having obtained an exclusive right to the use of 
his invention from two states; in the following year he 
made an experiment with her in the Potowmac; and by 
the force of steam alone, propelled her against the current 
of that river at the rate of four miles an hour. In 1787, he 
published a pamphlet on the subject, which I have now before 
me, bearing this title — " A Short Treatise on the Application 
of Steam, whereby it is clearly shown, from actual Experi- 
ments, that Steam may be applied to Propel Boats or Vessels 
of any burthen against Rapid Currents, with Great Velocity." 
His main positions in this pamphlet are, to use his own words, 
"•' that a boat might be so constructed, as to be propelled 
through the water, at the rate of ten miles an hour, by the 
force of steam; and that the machinery employed for that 
purpose, might be so simple and cheap, as to reduce the price 
of freight at least one half in common navigation; likewise 
that it might be forced, by the same machinery, with consi- 
derable Velocity, against the constant stream of long and rapid 
rivers." Another passage may be quoted, as not less pointed 
and remarkable. 

" In the course of the autumn and winter of 1784, I made 
.such progress in the improvement of some steam engines 
which I had long conceived would have become of the great- 
est consequence in navigation, that I flattered myself this 
invention, if it answered my expectation (the truth whereof 
experiments have now established) would render my labours 
more extensively useful, by being equally applicable to small 
boats, or vessels of the largest size, to shallow and rapid 
rivers, or the deepest and roughest seas.''"' 

In his communication to General Washington, of March 
10th, 1786, he remarks, "I have quite convinced myself that 
boats of passage may be made to go against the current of 
the Mississippi or Ohio rivers, or in the gulf stream, from 60 
to 100 miles per day." 



268 HOSTILITIES OF THE 

PART I. In Thompson's Annals it is said that Miller appears to 
^•^'"^'^^'••^ have been exclusively the inventor of the double boat; but the 
first which Rumsey devised in 1784, was of that description. 
Another American of the name of Fitch engaged in a course 
of experiments of the same nature with those of Rumsey, 
about (he same time, and a sharp controversy arose between 
them with respect to priority,* What can be put beyond 
question, is, that Fitch laid his plan before Congress in 
1785; navigated the river Delaware up and down, in the 
year 1786, with a steam-boat, which was brought, before 
it was abandoned in 1791, to the celerity of eight miles 
an hour; and that he obtained from the legislatures of New 
Jersey, Delaware, New York, and Pennsylvania, an exclusive 
privilege for those states, in the years 1786, 7. There is 
not the least probability that either of these highly ingenious 
men had even heard of the suggestions of Savery and Hulls; 
there can be no doubt, indeed, of their total ignorance of 
whatever had been proposed or attempted in Europe. Their 
plans and experiments, besides possessing the merit of origi- 
nality, have the advantage over those of Miller and Syming- 
ton in all other respects. A scientific comparison does not 
lie within my province; but I feel myself authorized to assert, 
that the result would be in favour of the Americans. Their 
views were more extensive; their experiments bolder; and 
they accomplished much more, with machinery of such work- 
manship as could be procured in this country, at a time when 
it lagged far behind Great Britain in the mechanical arts. 

With respect, then, to the point of invention, exclusive of 
that of establishment which is conceded to her, America would 
seem to have stronger claims, in the matter of steam-naviga- 
tion, than Great Britain. The mere priority of time in the 
conception, where no communication can be presumed, will 
be viewed by none as the main consideration or determi- 
nate title. Mr. Colden has mentioned in some detail, in the 
Life of Fulton, the attempts of Fitch and Rumsey, on our 
rivers, and also the subsequent one of Rumsey on the Thames, 
in England, whither he repaired, in the expectation of find- 
ing' greater facilities, and more opulent patronage, for his 
plans; but those attempts are passed over in silence in the 

* Fitch published a pamphlet also, in 1788, which he entitled "The 
Original Steam-Boat supported, or a Reply to Rumsey." He states 
therein that he conceived his plan of steam-navigation in 1785; but dis- 
covered afterwards, that two Americans, Mr. Henry, and Mr. Andrew 
Ellicot, both of Pennsylvania, had thought of it as early as 1775. and 
1778. See Note T. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 



269 



British publications to which I have adverted.* The writer SEC. viii 
of the article Steam-Engine, in Rees' New Cyclopedia, ob- ^-^"'•''^"^^ 
serves, indeed, that steam-boats had been used in America, 
before the introduction of them by Fulton; and " were be- 
gun there by Mr. Symington!" a fact very creditable to Scot- 
land, but altogether new in America, which is without record 
or tradition of the labours of this missionary. 

To heighten the contrast between their fairness and the 
disingenuity of Mr. Golden, the Reviewers treat of the tor- 
pedos of Fulton, in a strain, which would imply, that his 
biographer had represented him as the first to propose the 
explosion of gunpowder under water. It might also be in- 
ferred from their language, that he had sought to vindicate the 
offer of the torpedos to the different governments of Europe. 
Now, as to the point of discovery, nothing can be more posi- 
tive and unambiguous, than the renunciation in the biography. 
" It would," says Mr. Golden, "be doing injustice to the me- 
mory of Mr. Fulton, not to notice, that Mr. Fulton did not 
pretend to have been the first who discovered that gunpowder 
might be exploded with effect under water; nor did he pretend 
to have been the first who attempted to apply it in that way 
as the means of hostility. He knew well what had been done 
by another ingenious native American, Bushnell, in our revo- 
lutionary war." The Reviewers repeat, from this passage, 
the instance of Bushnell with all formality, and the air of 
drawing it from their own store of knowledge! 

With regard to the conduct of Fulton in proffering his tor- 
pedos to various governments, his biographer goes no farther, 
in substance, than to assert, that Fulton reconciled it to his 

* Brlssot de Warville had noticed them in his Travels through the 
United States, in the following manner: 

Sept. 1788. 

" I went this day to see an experiment near the Delaware, on a boat, 
the object of which was to ascend rivers against the current. The in- 
ventor was Mr Fitch, who had formed a company to support the ex- 
pense. The machine which I saw appears well executed and well 
adapted to the design. The steam-engine gives motion to three large 
oars of considerable force, which were to give sixty strokes per mi- 
nute. Since writing this, I have seen Mr. Rumsey in England. He is 
a man of great ingenuity ; and by the explanation which he has given 
me, it appears that his discovery, though founded on a similar principle 
with that of Mr. Fitch, is very different from it, and far more simple in 
its execution. Mr. Rumsey proposed then (Feb. 1789) to build a vessel 
rohich should go to America by the help oftfw steam-engine, and ^uithout sails. 
It ivas to make the passage in ff teen days. 1 perceive with pain that he 
has not yet executed his project, which, when executed, will introduce 
into commerce as great a change as the discovery of the Cape of Good 
JHope." 



!ii70 HOSTILITIES OF THL 

PAHT I. own ideas of" propriety, and acted from honest impressions, 
^--•'■N--^^ whether false or correct. The proceeding of Mr. Fuiion is 
certainly supported by European examples without number, 
and may be considered as natural in every sanguine projector. 
^ I cannot easily see how an American, pursuing mechanical 

inventions in Europe, would be, prima facie, culpable for 
offering to France and England indiscriminately, a destructive 
engine of war. The success of the one or the other power, is 
to be supposed indifferent to his feelings. I grant that, if the 
engine could be turned against his own country, he would never 
be justifiable. The talents and contrivances of English engi- 
neers have been lent indiscriminately to aid the hostilities of 
all the principal nations of Europe; with the sanction of the 
government, when the interests of England were not likely to 
be affected. The Count de Bonneval and others of his descrip- 
tion were never blamed, in Europe, for the mere fact of de- 
voting their genius and skill to the improvement of the Turk- 
ish armies and fortifications. Britain is now enriching herself 
by supplying both Spain and her colonies with the means 
of warfare; from her manufactories issued the weapons and 
ammunition, with which the nations of Africa assailed and 
slaughtered each other for the purpose of filling her slave 
ships. 

I note these circumstances, to emblazon the modesty of the 
Reviewers in raising an outcry against the conduct of Fulton, 
and the character of his expedient of submarine explosion. 
They are, forsooth, filled with horror at this " succinct mode 
of murder en masse;" these " infernal machines;" forgetting 
the machines called Congreve rockets, which, — while the 
torpedos can be directed only against armaments, — have been 
principally used by the British against the towns and domestic 
dwellings of their enemies; sometimes, as in the instance of 
Stonington, to envelope in flames, houses in which unoffend- 
ing American women and children were placed for shelter. 
It may be proposed, as a problem for their consideration, 
whether the destruction of one of the bomb-vessels employed 
on that occasion, by a torpedo, would have been more atro- 
cious, than the act of the British general Sheaffe at the town 
of York in Canada, who left in the fortification from which he 
was driven by the American army, a secret mine, that ex- 
ploded a moment too soon, or it would have " blown whole 
regiments into the air;" and, as the case was, killed many 
brave soldiers, — among them, the lamented Pike. 

" Lord St. Vincent," say the Reviewers, " appears to have 
set his face against this unworthy mode of warfare, the tor- 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 271 

pedo; feeling, as we believe every British officer would feel, SEC. vlil. 
that setting aside the intent, swc/i devices icere for the weak and v^^'^""^-' 
not for the strong. In his own mind, Mr. Pitt did, we dare 
say, condemn it, as every man of sense and honour would." 
Now, it is on record, that these two eminent personages, and 
every British officer, rejoiced in the Congrcve rockets; and 
that a board of British officers of the highest rank reported 
them, after their trial at Boulogne and Flushing, a most 
eligible auxiliary to the British arms. To show how innocent 
and generous a device they are, when compared with that 
"succinct mode of murder en masse," the torpedo, I will copy 
some passages of the ample and able account ©f them which 
is given in Rees' Cyclopedia, article Rocket. 

"The Congreve Rocket. These rockets are of various 
dimensions, and are differently armed, according as they are 
intended for the field, or for bombardment; carrying in the 
first instance either shells or canister shot, which may be ex- " 
ploded at any part of their flight, spreading death and de- 
struction amongst the columns of the enemy; and in the se- 
cond, where they are intended for the destruction of buildings, 
shipping., stores, &c. they are armed with a peculiar species 
of composition which never fails of destroying every com- 
bustible material with which it comes in contact." 

" The carcass rocket has been used in almost every one of 
our expeditions. They did incredible execution at Copenhagen. 
At the siege of Flushing, general Monnet, the French com- 
mandant, made a formal remonstrance to Lord Chatham re- 
specting the use of them in that bombardment. A small 
corps of rocketeers, in the memorable battle of Leipsic, 
gloriously maintained the honour of the British arms. All the 
more minute and important particulars of this weapon, both 
of construction and composition, are very properly kept a pro- 
found secret. The largest rocket that has yet been construct- 
ed, has not, we believe, exceeded three hundred weight; but 
Sir William Congreve seems to have in contemplation others 
weighing from half a ton to a ton." 

" By means of the rocket, the most extensive destruction, 
even amounting to annihilation, may be carried among the 
ranks of an advancing enemy, and that with the exposure of 
scarcely an individual. For this purpose, the rockets are laid 
in batteries, &c. They facilitate the capture of a ship by 
boarding, by being thrown into the ports, &c.; the confusion 
and destruction which thence inevitably ensue, facilitate, &c. 
They are peculiarly adapted to add to the dreadful effect ot 
fire ships, which, if they were supplied each with a sufficient 



272 HOSTILITIES OF THL 

I 

PART I. number of lockels, such an extensive and devastaling fire 
— *^v-^^ would be spread in every direction, as to involve every vessel oj 
the enemy in that destructive element. The floating rocket car- 
cass., another of the inventor's applications, may be thrown 
in great quantities bv a fair wind, against any fleet or arsenal, 
without the smallest risk., or without approaching within range 
of guns, &c," 

" Little more need be said in reference to the general im- 
portance and utility o( the rocket system, &c." 

The inconsistency of the Reviewers, as Englishmen, is fur- 
ther manifested by the facts, so well attested as to be unde- 
niable, that the British ministry conceived strong alarms at 
the negociations between Fulton and the French government 
respecting the adoption of the torpedo; that they made over- 
tures to him, and drew hinn to England; that they encouraged 
his experiments with a view to employ his " infernal ma- 
chines," if found effectual, against the enemies of Great 
Britain; that they actually made an attempt to destroy the 
Boulogne flotilla by his means; and that, after appointing a 
com.mittee to decide upon the expediency of adopting his 
" devices," they finally rejected them altogether as imprac- 
ticable., — not as cruel, immoral, or dishonourable. From 
what passed, it is not uncharitable to suspect, that the true 
key to the rejection, is furnished in the saying of Lord St. 
Vincent, the authenticity of which the Reviewers do not dis- 
pute. " Pitt is the greatest fool that ever existed to encou- 
rage a mode of war which they who command the seas do 
not want." Mr. Pitt, it would seem from the statement of 
Mr. Golden, remarked, when he first saw a drawing of the 
torpedo, with a sketch of the mode of applying it, and un- 
derstood what would be the effects of the explosion — that " if 
introduced into practice, it could not fail to annihilate all 
military marines.,''^ — an effect which Great Britain could not 
feel it her interest to promote. 

The occasion of the establishment of steam navigation, 
appeared to the Reviewers, as that of the exploration of our 
western regions had done, very suitable for the vilification of 
the American people at large. Accordingly, they proceed in 
this exalted language — " The vagrant adventurer, Fulton, hav- 
ing failed in selling his infernal machines, sets himself to 
prove, in a high strain of moral pathos, that ' blowing up 
ships of war' (so as not to leave a man to relate the dreadful 
catastrophe) are humane experiments. We ought not to wonder 
after this, perhaps, that the character of Mr. Fulton has sur- 
vived in America a^ that of an honest, conscientious, and con- 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 273 

sistent man, especially as Mr. Cadwallader Colden has sup- SEC.viii. 
ported his claim to if," &c. v.*r-v'->»^ 

Having painted the American engineer in the blackest co- 
lours, and denied to him all original genius, they have not, 
with the London Critical Journal, deemed it advisable to 
represent him as " a native of Paisley, in Scotland,* where 
he had steam-boats constructed, actually employed both for 
experiment and use." But the author of the article in 
Tiiompson's Annals, being more kindly in his language con- 
cerning the merits of Fulton, and therefore not under the 
same restraint, clinches him and his offspring thus — "The 
experiments by Mr. Miller on the Forth and Clyde Canal, we 
have been informed, were either seen by, or communicated 
to, the late Mr. Fulton, engineer of America, who, it is be- 
lieved, was a native., or at least resided in this part of Scot- 
land, but afterwards went to America, where he had the merit 
and the honour, of introducing the steam-boat, upon an ex- 
tensive scale, on the great rivers and lakes of that country; so 
that we can trace this invention most indisputably to a British 
origin." We cannot suppose that a " civil engineer," treat- 
ing of the history of steam-boats, in the month of April, 
1819, was ignorant of the existence, or had not opened the 
volume, of Fulton"'s biography, where his birth place is so 
distinctly and authentically stated. The misrepresentation 
which I have just quoted, is, therefore, unpardonable, and 
dishonours the valuable Journal in which it is found. There 
is a littleness, besides, in some of the arts practised by the 
Reviewers to gratify their spleen in this business of steam- 
boat navigation, which is truly pitiable. For instance, in the 
index to the nineteenth volume of the Quarterly Review, at 
the word ' Colden,' we read, " The Life of Robert Fulton — 
its bombastic exordium;'''' and at the word ' Fulton' — " his 
ingratitude to England.,'''' &c. making the index., in this man- 
ner, the vehicle of reproaches of a particular nature, more 
direct than are hazarded in the body of the volume. 

The Reviewers have not been content, in the article under 
consideration, with mangling the reputation of Fulton and his 
performances, but have turned aside to assail another Ameri- 
can, for whom his country has claimed the merit of an im- 
portant invention. I allude to Godfrey, who is contemptu- 



* They have, however, in their twentieth number made Rittenhouse 
an Enghshman. The astronomer was born within seven miles of Phi- 
ladelphia; and never absent from his native country. His ancestors 
were of the banks of the Rhine. 

Vol. I. — M m 



274 HOSTILITIES OF THE 

PART I. ously mentioi>ecl in a note, and then introduced in the text 
"^-^"^^^^ with greater indignity. The note is as follows — " Jl man 
of the name of Logan^ tvc think, as obscure as Godfrey himself 
claimed for the latter, the invention of Hadleifs Quadrant! — 
tico years after the description of it had, as he says, appeared 
in the Philosophical Transactions.'''' The reference to Godfrey, 
in the text, is in this strain — '' We are almost malicious enough 
to wish Franklin were alive, to see with what little ceremony 
his admiring countrymen have dove-tailed him in between 
two worthies, one of whom (Godfrey) he has himself desig- 
nated, in his correspondence, as a most dogmatical, overbear- 
ing, and disagreeable fellow, who gave himself airs because 
he had acquired a smattering of mathematics." 

Before I proceed to comment upon the note, which is too 
choice a specimen of the temper and knowledge which these 
Reviewers bring to the discussion of American affairs, to be 
suffered to remain without elucidation, I will beg leave to 
quote what Franklin has really said of Godfrey, in order that 
my reader may compare it at once with their report, and 
better understand the degree of reliance to be placed on their 
citations. It is not in his Correspondence, but in his Memoirs, 
that Franklin speaks of Godfrey, and it is in these words: 
" Among the first members of our Junto, was Thomas God- 
frey, a self-taught mathematician, great in his way, and after- 
wards inventor of what is now called IIadley''s Quadrant. But 
he knew little out of his way, and was not a pleasing com- 
panion; as, like most great mathematicians I have met with, 
he expected universal precision in every thing said, and was 
for ever denying or distinguishing upon trifles, to the disturb- 
ance of all conversation. I continued to board with God- 
frey, who lived in part of my house, with his wife and child- 
ren, and had one side of the shop for his glazier's business, 
though he worked little, being always absorbed in mathema- 
tics." So much for the smattering of mathematics. And were 
the other parts of the pretended designation verified, it would 
be difficult to perceive, what the habits of the mathematician 
in society, have to do with the question of the invention of 
the quadrant. 

The " man of the name of Logan, as obscure as Godfrey," 
can be no other than "the honourable and learned Mr. Logan" 
of whom Franklin also speaks in his Memoirs, and who, next 
to William Penn, makes the most considerable figure in the 
History of Pennsylvania: — whom the proprietary entrusted 
with the management of all his affairs in the province, and 
cherished through life as the ablest and most faithful of his 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 275 

iViends; — who made valuable communications to the Royal '^^^^ vui. 
Society, three of which are to be found in one volume ot ^■^'''''''^**-^ 
its Transactions, the 38th;* whose charges as Chief Justice 
of Pennsylvania were reprinted and read with admiration, 
in London: who corresponded regularly with the most 
eminent among the scientific worthies of his time; such as 
Linnasus, Fabricius, Dr. Mead, Dr. Halley, Sir Hans 
Sloan, Dr. Fothergill, Peter Collinson, William Jones (fa- 
ther of Sir William): and whom all consulted with the de- 
ference due to a mind of the first order, in the variety and 
strength of its powers, and of indefatigable activity in the 
cultivation and advancement of nearly every branch of know- 
ledge. There is a striking similarity in the talents, studies, 
and vocation of Dr. Colden and James Lcgan; and of the 
latter I think I may say, without exaggeration, that he was 
excelled in no respect by any one of the Europeans who set- 
tled on this continent; and that if he is obscure^ none was 
better entitled to the most brilliant illustration. An ' honest 
chronicler,' Proud, with whose History of Pennsylvania, — 
the labourers for the American department in the Quarterly 
Review, ought not to be unacquainted, — has spoken of his 
" living actions," and made a summary exposition of his 
character and career, which I will copy lor their instruction, 
vouching myself, from personal inquiry, for the accuracy of 
all the particulars. 

" James Logan was descended of a family originally from 
Scotland, where, in the troubles of that country, occasioned by 
the affair of Earl Gowrie^ in the reign of James the VI. his 
grandfather, Robert Logan, was deprived of a considerable 
estate; in consequence of which, his father, Patrick Logan, 
being in reduced circumstances, removed into Ireland, and 
fixed his residence at Lurgan, the place of his son James'' 
birth. Patrick Logan had the benefit of a good education, in 
the university of Edinburgh; where he commenced master of 
arts; — but afterwards joined in religious society with the 
Quakers. — This, his son, James Logan, being endowed with 
a good genius, and favoured with a suitable education, made 
considerable proficiency in divers branches of learning and 
science; after which he went to England; from whence, in 
the year 1699, and about the 25th of his age, he removed to 

* For the years 1733, 1734. One of the papers is entitled " Some 
experiments concerning the Impregnation of the Seeds of Plants;" 
another " Some thoughts concerning the Sun and Moon, when near 
the horizon., appearing larger than when near the zenith." See Note U. 



276 HOSTILITIES OF THE 

PART I. Pennsylvania, in company with Williant, Penn, in his latter 
^"i^"'^''^^^ voyage to America; and in 1701, lie was, by commission 
from the Proprietary, appointed secretary of the province, and 
clerk of the council for the same." 

" He adhered to what was deemed the proprietary interest; 
and exerted himself with great fidelity to it. He held the 
several offices of provincial secretary, commissioner of pro- 
perty, chief justice, and for near iwo years, governed the pro- 
vince, as president of tlie council." 

" Many years before his death, he retired pretty much 
from the hurry and incumbrance of public affairs, and spent 
the latter part of his time, jirincipally at Stanton^ his country 
seat, near Germanlown, about five or six miles from Philadel- 
phia; where he enjoyed, among his books, that leisuie in 
which men of letters take delight, and corresponded with tiie 
literati in diflferent parts of Europe. He was well versed in 
both ancient and modern learning, acrpiainfrd with the ori- 
ental tongues, a master of the Latin, Greek, French, and 
Italian languages; deeply skilled in the mathematics, and in 
natural and moral philosophy; as several pieces of his own 
writing, in Latin, &c. demonstrate; some of which have gone 
througli divers impressions in different parts of Europe., and 
are highly esteenifd. Among his productions of this nature, 
his Expcrincnta .\Ieleteniata de Plantarum Generatione^ or his 
Experiments on the Indian Corn or Maize of America^ with 
his observations arising therefrom, on the generation of plants, 
published in Latin, at Leyden, in 1739, and afterwards, in 
1747, republished in London, with an English version on the 
opposite page, by Dr. J. Pothergill, are both curious and in- 
genious. — Along with this piece was likewise printed, in 
Lalin, at Leyden, another treatise, by the same author, en- 
titled, ' Cananmnpro inveniendis refractionum, turn simpliciumy 
turn in Icnlibus duplicium Jocis, demonslrationes geometrical.^ — 
" JJuturc Jacobo Logan, Judice supremo et Prceside provincioe. 
Pensilvaniensis, in America.'''' And in his old age, he trans- 
lated C'lcero^s excellent treatise, De senectute, which, with his 
explanatory notes, was printed in Philadelphia, with a pre- 
face or encomium, by Benjamin Franklin, afterwards Dr. 
Franklin, o{ that ciiy, in 1774. He was one of the people 
calit^d Quakers, and died on the 31st of October, 1751, aged 
about 77 years; — leaving as a monument of his public spirit 
and benevolence to the people of Pennsylvania, a library, 
which he had been 50 years in collecting; (since called the 
Loganian Library) intending it for the common use and bene- 
fit of all lovers of learning. It was said to contain the best 



BRITISH REVIEWS. S77 

editions of the best books, in various languages, arts and SEC.VllI. 
sciences, and to be the largest, and by far the most valuable, \,-»'-v-"*>. 
collection of the kind, at that time, in this pari of the world." 

The reputation which James Logan deservedly enjoyed for 
a profound acquaintance with (be mathematics, led Godfrey 
to seek his notice and aid, and to consult him on his projects 
in mechanical philosophy. That of the improvement of Da- 
vis' Quadrant struck Logan as of the greatest ingenuity and 
importance; and as GodtVey was then unknown beyond his 
native province, he undertook to be the herald and voucher of 
his invention with the philosophers of London. In the month 
of J\Iay, 1 732, he addressed a letter on the subject, to Dr. 
Edmund Halley; in which he described fully the construc- 
tion and uses of Godfrey's instrument. The following pas- 
sages of this letter explain his views of the case, and the mo- 
tives and objects of his interposition. 

" I shall presume from thy favour shown to me in England, 
in 1724, to communicate an invention that, whether it answer 
the end or not, will be allowed, 1 believe, to deserve thy re- 
gard. I have it thus." 

" A young man born in this country, Thomas Godfrey by 
name, by trade a glazier, who had no other education than to 
learn to read and write, with a little common arithmetic, 
having in his apprenticeship with a very poor man of that 
trade, accidentally met with a mathematical book, took such 
a fancy to the study, that, by the natural strength of his genius, 
without any instructor, he soon made himself master of that, 
and of every other of the kind he could borrow or procure in 
English; and finding there was more to be had in Latin books, 
under all imaginable discouragements, applied himself to the 
study of that language, till he could pretty well understand an 
author on these subjects; after which, the first time I ever 
saw or heard of him, to my knowledge, he came to borrow 
Sir Isaac Newton's Principia of me. Inquiring of him here- 
upon, who he was, I was indeed astonished at his request; 
but after a little discourse, he soon became welcome to that 
or any other book I had. This young man about 18 months 
since^ told me he had for some time been thinking of an in- 
strument for taking the distances of the stars by reflecting 
speculums, which he believed might be of service at sea; 
and not long after he showed me a common sea quadrant, to 
which he had fitted two pieces of looking-glass in such a 
manner as brought two stars at almost any distance to coin- 
cide. (Then follows a description of the instrument.) 

" But I am now sensible I have trespassed in being so par- 



218 HOSTILITIES OF THE 

PART I. ticular when writing to Dr. Halley; for I well know that to 
^^""^^"^^ a gentlemen noted for his excellent talent of reading, appre- 
hending, and greatly improving, less would have been suffi- 
cient; but as this possibly may be communicated by thee, I 
shall crave leave farther to add, that the use of the instrument 
is very easy," &c. 

" If the method of discovering the longitude by the moon is 
to meet with a reward, and this instrument, which, for all that 
I have ever read or heard of, is an invention altogether new, 
be made use of, in that case 1 would recommend the inventor 
to thy justice and notice. He now gets his own and family's 
bread (for he is married) by the labour of his own hands only, 
by that mean trade. lie had begun to make tables of the moon^ 
on the very same principles with thine^ till I lately put a copy oj 
those that have lain so many years printed, but not published^ 
with W. InnySy into his hands, and then highly approving them, 
he desisted.'''' ♦ 

In the same year, 1732, Godfrey prepared himself, an ac- 
count of his invention, addressed to the Royal Society; but 
it was not then transmitted, from the expectation which he 
entertained of the eifect of the letter to Halley. No notice, 
however, was taken of it by Halley, and after an interval of 
a year and a half, Logan resolved to have the matter submitted 
immediately to the Royal Society, For this purpose he trans- 
mitted a copy of the letter, together with the paper of God- 
frey, to Mr. Peter Collinson, as eminent botanist and member 
of the society, engaging him to lay them before that body. 
The result is detailed in the following authentic letter* to 
Logan, from his respectable friend. Captain Wright, who took 
charge of his communications to Collinson. 

London, Feb. 4th, 1734. 
Mr. James Logan. 

Sir — Your favour of December 4th I have received, and 
immediately carried that inclosed to Mr. Collinson (Jan. 26) 
who with pleasure received that, as he had done the former; 
and after reading it, with an agreeable smile, he said, " I make 
no doubt of removing the uneasiness our good friend is under, 
Avhich is all caused by some" of Dr. Halley''s cunning.'''' He 
very much referred to the management of Mr. Jones's inte- 
rest, as well as using his own, to have your letters communi- 

* Taken from the original, in tlie possession of Dr. George Logan, 
the grandson of James Logan, and who forms one pretty notable excep- 
tion, at least, to tiie rule of the Quarterly Review — that " there is no 
such person known in Amerioa as a respectable country gentleman," 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 279 

cated to the Royal Society in the most proper and likely man- sec. viii. 
ner to have eflfect. >^^-v-^^ 

I soon found means to take a glass with Mr. Jones,* who 
gave me his company a whole afternoon; wheji he often hinted 
at Dr. Halley's ungenerous treatment of you^ but said that was 
not the only time, for the doctor had been guilty of such things 
lo others. He very strongly believes Mr. Hadley was the 
inventor of his own instrument, and gives these reasons to 
support it: That as he had dwelt so long on improving and 
bringing to perfection the reflecting telescope, he could not 
miss of knowing how to bring two objects to coincide by spe- 
eulums; and he as firmly believes Thomas Godfrey loas the 
inventor of his instrument by the strength of his genius as Had- 
ley was of his by his help from the reflecting telescope., and 
says each one ought to have the merit of his own instrument. 
He then asked me the use of the bow I brought him last year, 
and in what respect it exceeded Davis's quadrant'^ I told him 
as far as I could, but that for my own part I had never used 
it. He was pleased with the invention, and said it deserved 
notice, if it answered what was proposed, and desired I would 
get one made; for it would signify nothing to mention it to the 
society, without a model; and that, being produced, would be 
a strong voucher for Thomas Godfrey, to show that he had a 
capacity and a genius tending that way; and it would be a 
very good introduction for the reading of your letter to Dr. 
Halley. I got one made in two days, and carried it to Mr. 
Collinson (30th Jan.) who sent it to Sir Hans Sloan's; where 
it underwent an examination by four or five members, one of 
which was Mr. Hadley, who, with the others, highly approved 
of it. The next day it was produced to the Royal Society, 
where Mr. Norris and myself were introduced by Mr. Collin- 
son; and upon reading the description of the bow, I had the 
pleasure of hearing your first letter to Dr. Halley read, which 
was all that was then read; and when done, Mr. Machen ad- 
dressed the president (or the gentleman who supplied his 
place; for Sir H. Sloan was not there, being absent upon ac- 
count of his brother-in-law's death), and said lie had the 
vouchers ready on the table for any one'^s perusal, who might 
doubt of the truth of that letter, or the instrument being ge- 
nuine, and no ways taken from Mr. Hadley's, but found out 
about the same time that his was, or rather prior to it, if the 
vouchers were true; and if they are not, then, said he, " we 

* Father of the celebrated Sir William Jones, and an eminent ma- 

thematirian 



280 HOSTILITIES OP THE 

TART 1. must believe that all the people of Pennsylvania are combined 
^■^~^^'>«»' to impose on the society — which no reasonable man can do." 
He said some shrewd things of Dr. Hcdley, and concluded with 
saying that the inventor claimed the justice of having that 
description registered, which he thought no one could deny 
him; and should that instrument be the park for the longitude, 
the inventors of the rest must dispute their priority before the 
learned in law. A^o person said any thing against it^ so that 
it will be registered. Mr. Williams has been under some pain 
for these two transactions, as miscarried in Jones's hands, but 
hope he has cleared it up to your satisfaction. If not, I am 
certain of doing it on my arrival. 

My hearty desires for yours and your good family's health, 
to whom my best respects. I am, dear sir, 

Your obliged humble servant, 

Edward Wright. 

In the month of June, 1734, Mr. Logan addressed to the 
Royal Society, "• A further Account of Thon-ias Godfrey's 
Improvement of Davis's Quadrant transferred to the Mariner's 
Bow," which, under this title, was inserted implicitly in the 
volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society for the same 
year.* I proceed to extract some parts of Logan's paper, 
which develop further the history of the case. 

" Being informed that this improvement, proposed by God- 
frey, of this place, for observing the sun's altitude at sea, with 
more ease and expedition than is practicable by the common 
instrument in use for that purpose, was last winter laid before 
the Royal Society, in his own description of it, and that some 
gentlemen wished to see the benefit intended by it more fully 
and clearly explained, I, who have here the opportunity of 
knowing the author's thoughts on such subjects, being per- 
suaded in my judgment, that, if the instrument, as he pro- 
poses it, be brought into practice, it will in many cases, be of 
great service to navigation, have, therefore, thought it proper 
to draw up a more full account of it than the author himself 
has given," &c. 

" Some masters of vessels, who sail from hence to the West 
Indies, have got some of them made, as well as they can be 
done here, and have found so great advantage in the facility 
and the ready use of them in those southerly latitudes, that 
they reject all others. It is now four years since Thomas 
Godfrey hit on this improvement: for his account of it, laid 

* Month of December. Article 3d. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 281 

before the society last winter, in which he mentioned two SEC.Vlll. 
years, was wrote in 1732; and in the same year, 1730, after ^.^-v-^i^ 
he was satisfied in this of a real improvement in the quadrant, 
he applied himself to think of the other, viz. the reflecting 
instrument by speculums, for a help in the case of longitude, 
though it is also useful in taking altitudes; and one of these, 
as has been abundantly proved by the maker, and those who 
had it with them, was taken to sea, and there used in observ- 
ing the latitude, the winter of that year, and brought back to 
Philadelphia before the end of February, 1731, and was in 
my keeping some months immediately after." 

"It was indeed unhappy, that, having it in my power, see- 
ing he had no acquaintance nor knowledge of persons in Eng- 
land, that I transmitted not an account of it sooner. But I had 
other affairs, of more importance to me; and it was owing to 
an accident which gave me some uneasiness, viz. his attempt- 
ing to publish some account of it in print here, that I trans- 
mitted it at last, in May, 1732, to Dr. Halley, to whom I made 
no doubt but the invention would appear entirely new; and 
I must own I could not but wonder that our good will at least 
was never acknowledged. This, on my part, was all the merit 
I had to claim, nor did I then, or now, assume any other in 
either of these instruments. I only wish ihat the ingenious 
inventor himself might, by some means, be taken notice of, 
in a manner that might be of real advantage to him." 

In his letter to the Royal Society, Godfrey expresses him- 
self in the simple and natural manner which bespeaks en- 
tire sincerity. He begins thus — "Gentlemen: As none are 
better able than the Royal Society to prove and judge whether 
such inventions as are proposed for the advancing useful 
knowledge will answer the pretensions of the inventors or not; 
and as I have been made acquainted, though at so great a dis- 
tance, of the candour of your learned Society in giving en- 
couragement to such as merit approbation, I have, therefore, 
presumed to lay before the Society, the following, craving par- 
don for my boldness." He then states that finding with what 
ditficulty a tolerable observation of the sun was taken by 
Davis's quadrant; he, therefore, applied his thoughts for up- 
wards of two years, to find a certain instrument. After de- 
scribing his improvement and the extent of its utility, he con- 
cludes with the following phrase — "I hope Dr. Halley has 
received a more full account of this from J. Logan, Esq.; 
therefore I shall add no more than that I am, &c." 

Neither Logan nor Godfrey knew at the date of these com- 
munications, that Mr. John Hadley, the vice-president of the 

Vol. I.— N n 



282 HOSTILITIES OF THE 

PART I. Royal Society, had presented a paper to that body, dated May 
'-^^^"'*^ 13ih, 1731,* containing a full description and rationale of a 
reflecting qiiadrctnt of ilie same character, which he claimed 
as iiis invtnuon, and that his paper was inserted in the volume 
of the Philosophical Transactions, for that year. This com- 
munication of Hadley is the foundation of his title to the in- 
veniion. There is no direct proof, which I can discover, ot 
his having seen or heard of Godfrey's instrument; but the 
quotations wliich I have made establish the following facts — 
that Godfrey, witlioui the advantage of a hint, or of aid, from 
any quarter, completed it in the year 1730; that it was taken 
to sea soon after, and there used, in the course of the winter 
of that year, in observing the latitude, and brought back be- 
fore the end of February, 1731; that there was, therefore, a 
possibility of its being made known to Hadley, within good 
time for the preparation of his paper of the month of May. 

The tradition in Philadelphia is, that it was carried to Ja- 
maica by a captain of Godfrey's acquaintance, and shown there 
to a captain of a ship just departing for England, who gave 
information of it to Hadley, as a person distinguished for his 
skill and ingenuity in the construction and improvement of 
optical instruments. Be this as it may, the merit of priority, 
such as it is, lies manifestly with Godfrey; his invention was 
as complete, and passed quickly into use among the American 
masters of vessels. Mr. Logan could have no imaginable 
motive except benevolence and the promotion of science, for 
producing and urging the claims of Godfrey; he expressly dis- 
avows any pretension to a share in the invention; his eminent 
capacity to judge of its character, precludes all idea of his 
having been deceived, as the elevation of his nature and sta- 
tion does that of his having stooped to practise a deception. 
It will be seen, by an extract which I am about to make from 
one of his letters, of a later date, to the mathematician Wm. 
Jones, that he retained his persuasion of Godfrey's title, and 
was not without suspicion of foul play. 

" I have very little to say on the subject of instruments, but 
as in thy teaching, I formerly observed thy methods greatly 
excelled in neatness, so one instrument may for speed and 
certainty very much exceed another; and Thomas Godfrey's 
inventions were, I think, truly valuable, that by the reflecting 
speculums appears extremely so. I have here seen two of 
them as made by Hadley's direction, who enjoys both the re- 

* The volume of tlie Transactions in wliich it is contained, was no^. 
in fact, published, until after the date of Logan's Letters,, 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 283 

putation and profit of them, and I cannot but admire at it. SEC. viii. 
Thomas Godfrey has indeed a fine genius for the malhema- ^-^~v-^-' 
tics, and it would, for the sake of his birth place, which is 
the same as that of my own children, be a great pleasure to 
me to see him rewarded." 

The quotation which I have made from Franklin, shows 
that he ascribed the quadrant called Hadley's, to Godfrey; and 
as he at one time lived under the same roof with the maihe-- 
matician, and constantly took an interest in his affairs, his 
testimony is of no little moment. We have a decided opinion 
to the same effect, from another of his cotemporaries, Dr. 
John Ewing, a former provost of the University of Pennsyl- 
vania, and one of the most acute and learned mathematicians 
whom this country has produced.* Dr. Riltenhouse, when 
requested to pronounce in the matter, stated in writing, that 
he knew Mr. Godfrey and his quadrant, and had no doubt 
both Godfrey and Hadley were original inventors; that both 
instruments depended upon the same principles," &c. A 
weight of authority is thus found in favour of Godfrey's merit, 
sufliicient to satisfy us on this side of the Atlantic. If we 
claim no more for him than the having accomplished simulta- 
neously the same as is ascribed to Hadley, we shall have 
reason to be proud of his name; and, in comparing the cir- 
cumstances of his education and situation with those of the 
vice-president of the Royal Society, be entitled to attribute 
to him a superior, nay almost unrivalled natural genius. It 
is related that when Newton's Principia Mathematica made 
their appearance, " the best mathematicians were obliged to 
study them with care, and those of a lower rank durst not 
venture upon them, till encouraged by the testimonies of the 
learned." The American glazier, without encouragement 
from any quarter, wholly self-taught in the mathematics and 
in the Latin, ventured upon, and mastered this great work at 
an early age; and finally, with the embarrassments of an hum- 
ble trade, and extreme poverty, produced the most useful of 

* See a paper of Dr. Ewing in the 1st vol. of the Transactions of A. 
P. S. ; describing an improvement of his own in the construction of 
Godfrey's quadrant. He calls it the most useful of all astronomical in- 
struments, the world ever knew. There is, also, inserted in the Ame- 
rican periodical work, the Port Folio, for Dec. 1817, a letter of Dr. 
Ewing, in which he says, "Logan gives a full description of the re- 
flecting instrument Mr. Godfrey constructed, which appears to be the 
very i^istniment now in common use; some very trifling diff'erences in 
the construction only excepted; which might have been made by Mr. 
Hadley, and which are hardly worth the mentioning in the invention of 
such an excellent and uncommon instrument." 



284 HOSTILITIES or THE 

PART I. astronomical instruments. He may have been, in the courtlj 
'^'^'^^''>—^ language of the Quarterly Review, " a dogmatical, overbearing 
and disagreeable fellow;" but he must still attract the highest 
admiration for the strength of his intellectual powers, and the 
resolution and perseverance of his spirit. Let his countrymen, 
universally, attach his name to the quadrant, and in the course 
of a few ages, the race between the names of Hadley and God- 
frey will end in the same manner as the rivalry of the British 
and American nations in numbers, power, and consideration. 

There is not the least colour, even for the supposition, that 
the American mathematician drew the notion of his improve- 
ment upon Davis's quadrant, from an external source; every 
circumstance imposes the belief that it was entirely the pro- 
duct of his own genius and combinations. This is not the 
case, however, with respect to Hadley, though we should dis- 
miss from the question, the possibility of his being indebted to 
Godfrey's labours. I do not know but that the Quarterly Re- 
viewers may consider the authority which I am about to cite 
— Dr. Hulton, F. R. S. of London and Edinburgh, and 
Emeritus Professor of mathematics in the Royal Military 
Academy at Woolwich — quite as obscure as Logan and God- 
frey. Nevertheless, I will venture to appeal to his Mathema- 
tical and Philosophical Dictionary, in which, at the article 
Quadrant, I find the following statement. 

" Hadley's Quadrant. So called from its inventor John 
Hadley, Esq. is now universally used, as the best of any, for 
nautical and other observations. It seems the first idea of this 
excellent instrument was suggested by Dr. Hooke; for Dr. 
Sprat, in his History of the Royal Society, p. 246, mentions 
the invention of a new instrument for taking angles by reflec- 
tion, by which means the eye at once sees the two objects 
both as touching the same point, though distant almost to a 
semi-circle; which is of great use for making exact observa- 
tions at sea. This instrument is described and illustrated by 
a figure in Hooke's posthumous works, p. 503. But as it ad- 
mitted of only one reflection, it would not answer the pur- 
pose. The matter, however, icas at last effected by Sir Isaac 
Micton, who cmnmunicated to Dr. Halley a paper of his own 
writing, containing the description of an instrument with two 
reflections, which soon after the doctor's death was found 
among his papers by Mr. Jones, by whom it was communi- 
cated to the Royal Society, and it was published in the Phi- 
losophical Transactions for the year n42. How it happened 
that Dr. Halley never mentioned this in his life time, is difficult 
to account for; more especially as Mr. Hadley had described. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 



285 



in the Transactions for 1731, his instrument rchich is construct- SEC.vili. 
ed on the same principles.* Mr. Hadley, who was well ac- ■^■.^^^^^ 
quaiuted with Sir Isaac Newton, might have heard him say, 
ihat Dr. Hooke's proposal could be effected by means of a 
double reflection; and perhaps in consequence of this hint, 
he might apply himself, without any previous knowledge of 
what Newton had actually done, to the construction of his in- 
strument. Mr. Godfrey, too, of Pennsylvania, had recourse 
to a similar expedient; for which reason some gentlemen of 
that colony have ascribed the invention of this excellent in- 
strument to him. The truth may probably he^ that each of 
these gentlemen discovered the method independent of one an- 
other.''^ 

The opinion thus liberally and decorously expressed by Dr. 
Hutton, was, without doubt, that of the Royal Society in 
1733, when the whole matter was brought under their con- 
sideration. Otherwise, they never would have consented to 
admit into the volume of their Transactions, the paper of 
Logan, after they had published that of Hadley. The Quar- 
terly Review has attributed to Logan — how accurately let the 
reader now decide — the avowal that two years had elapsed 
since the appearance of Hadley's paper, when he preferred 
the claim of Godfrey. But, admitting the interval to be so 
great, if we admit also, the facts, of which there can be no 
doubt, — that Godfrey's instrument was completed in 1730, 
and that Logan, when he communicated the invention to Dr. 
Halley, in 1732, believed, as he asserts, that it would appear 
entirely new to Halley — the delay in the communication of it, 
which Logan at the same time satisfactorily explains, can fur- 
nish no argument nor presumption against the validity of God- 
frey's claim. The dispute between Sir Isaac Newton and 
Leibnitz, concerning the invention of the method of fluxions, 

* If we consider the character which Halley bore, according to the 
statement of captain Wright; his silence with respect to Newton's 
paper; and the suppression of Logan's letter — the conviction forces 
itself upon the mind, that he had resolved to secure the credit of the 
invention to Hadley. By the History of the Royal Society, we find 
that on the 1st of September, 1732, after the receipt of Logan's letter, 
Halley volunteered to attend, on the part of the Society, a trial at sea, 
of Hadley's quadrant, and reported in its favour, without giving the 
least intimation of his knowledge of the conception or completion of 
the instrument in any other quarter. The paper of Newton is inserted 
in the Philosophical Transactions, No. 465. p. 155, with the descrip- 
tion — " A true copy of a paper, in the hand writing of Sir Isaac New- 
ton, found among the papers of the late Dr. Halley, containing a de- 
scription of an instrument for observing the moon's distance from the 
frxed stars at sea " 



286 HOSTILITIES OF THE 

PART I. presents a case, similar to the present, in several respects. 

^-^"^'"^^ Nuw'on published his method only in 1704, after Leibnitz 
bad given his Diirerential Calculus to the world. The former 
traced his invention to the years 1665, 1666; and the Roya? 
Society decided in his favour upon this ground. The scientific 
world at large has acquiesced in the opinion, that the credit 
of origination is due to both these illustrious philosophers; 
and siich, in all likelihood, will be its conclusion in regard 
to Godfrey and Hadley. 

3. We might have expected from the Quarterly Review 
about the same degree of scrupulosity in eulogizing England 
and its condition, as in defaming the United States. But it 
was natural to look for more consistency in the one case than 
we have found in the other. Here we shall be disappointed 
to an extent which is truly marvellous, and which destroys all 
confidence in any of the generalities so profusely sown in the 
pages of that journal. I must be permitted to bring together 
some of the many passages establishing the instructive fact. 

" Since man has ceased to exist in the patriarchal state, 
he has no where, nor at any period, existed in so favourable a 
condition, as in England at the present time." " England is 
of all parts of the world, the most prosperous and the rnost 
happy, blest above all countries, either of the ancient or the 
modern world." (No. 31, 1817.) 

" England is basking in the broad sunshine of peace and 
prosperity. England wants nothing but thankfulness; nothing 
but a due sense of the mercies which are heaped upon her 
with an unsparing hand." (No. 37, 1818.) 

" England, in the full glory of arts and arms, in the pleni- 
tude of her strength and exuberance of her wealth, in her 
free government and pure faith, just laws and uncorrupted 
manners^ public prosperity and private happiness; England, in 
each and all of these respects, presents an object not to be 
paralleled in past ages or in other countries, — an object which 
tills with astonishment the understanding mind, and which the 
philosopher and the Christian may contemplate not only with 
complacency, but with exultation, with the deepest gratitude 
to the Giver of all good, and the most animating hopes for the 
further prospects and progress of mankind." (April, 1816.) 

" The great mass of our population is in a state which renders them 
the easy dupes of every mischievous demagogue." "The Enghsh 
are an uneducated people." (No 31,1816.) "The abuse of the press 
is the curse of English liberty." (Ibid.) 

" The London theatres are disgraced by open and scandalous immo- 
ralities." (Ibid.) 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 



287 



"The next generation may see grass growing in the now populous SEC. VIII. 
city of Nottingham, from the outrages of the Luddites." (Ibid.) ._^-.^^— ^. 

" Those who .suffered, for t!ie agricultural riots, under the sentence 
of the law, were men of substance." 

" The men who grow corn are never the men who set fire to it. A 
large proportion of the misled multitude, who have been burning barns 
and corn-stacks, would have been aiding the civil power to repress 
these frantic outrages, if they had had their own little property to 
defend. Let us not deceive ourselves ! Governments are safe in pro- 
portion as the great body of the people are contented, and men cannot 
,be contented, when ihcy woi-k with ike prospect of want and pauperism 
before their eyes, as what must be their destiii!/ at last." (April, 1816.) 

" In the road vvhicli the English labourer must travel, tiie poor-house 
is the last stage on the way to the grave. Hence it arises, as a natural 
result, that looking to the parish as his ultimate resource, and as that to 
whicli he must come at last, he cares not how soon he applies to it. 
There is neither hope nor pride to withhold him : why should lie deny 
himself any indulgence in youth, or why make any efforts to put oiF 
for a little while that which is inevitable at the end? That the labour- 
ing poor feel thus, and reason thus, and act in consequence, is beyond 
all doubt." (No. 29.) 

"There can be no doubt, that Christian slaves are subject to much 
harsh treatment, and especially in Algiers : but no Englishman has been 
made a slave.- and before we go out of the way to seek for objects of 
misery abroad, it vvoidd be wise and humane to relieve those which we 
have at home. One would think that the general distress in the agri- 
cultural and manufacturing classes ; the suite of tlie poor — tiie prisons — 
the hospitals and mad houses ; would supply us with abundant objects 
to relieve the plethora of philanthropy with which we seem to be 
bursting " (Ibid.) 

'' if adversity be favourable to the development of our virtues, 
(and indeed many of our noblest qualities woidil never be developed 
under any other discipline), there is a degree of misery which is fatal 
to them, and which hardens the heart as much as manual labour indu- 
rates the skin, and destroys all finer sense ot touch. (Ibid.) 

''Mournful as tliis is, it is far more mournfid to contemplate the 
effects of extreme poverty in the midst of a civilized and flourishing- 
society. The wretched native of Terra del Fuego, or of the northern 
extremity of America, sees nothing around him which aggravates his 
own wretchedness by comparison; the chief fares no better than the 
rest of the horde, and the slave no worse than his master; the priva- 
tions which they endure are common to all; they know of no state 
happier than their own, and submit to their miserable circumstances as 
to a law of nature. But in a country like ours, there exists a contrast 
which continually forces itself upon the eye and upon the reflective 
faculty. There was a Methodist dabbler in art who, in the days of our 
childhood, used to edify the public with allegorical prints from the 
great manufactory of Carrington Bowles; one of these curious com- 
positions represented a human figure, of which the right side was 
dressed in the full fashion of the day, while the left was undressed to 
the very bones, and displayed a skeleton. The contrast in tliis worse 
than Mezentian imagination is not inore frightful, than that between 
healtl) and squalid pauperism, who are every day jostling each other in 
the street." (ibid.) 

" It is but too true we fear, that, within the last thirty years, a con- 
siderable degradation of moral character, has been observable among 
the lower ranks of society; we wish we could say that it mounted no 
higher. The ostentatious display of clLiritable donations, posted in 



28b 



HOSTILITIES OP THE 



PART I. front of the public newspapers, would seem to have subdued tiiat pride 
\^r>/'^<^^ and independence of feeling, which would once have shrunk from being 
held up as the objects of such charity." 

" The labouring people of Scotland live chiefly on potatoes and oat- 
meal. — In the northern counties of England, these furnish the principal 
part of every meal, and it is well known that nine-tenths of the popu- 
lation of Ireland subsist almost entirely upon them." (No. 24.) 

" The article offish is a luxury in all the great cities and towns of 
the empire; is confined to the upper ranks of society." (Ibid.) 

" The prices of provisions in London are shamefully kept up by mo- 
nopolies, arising out of overgrown capitals." (Ibid.) 

" The sudden stopjjage of any particular branch of manufacture 
tisually sends multitudes to the poor-house." (Ibid.) 

" In some parts of England, the paupers average nearly one-fourth 
of the population." (Ibid.) 

♦• The recent parliamentary enquiry has shown that there are from 
120 to 130.000 children in the metropolis without the means of educa- 
tion 4,000 of whom are let out by their parents to beggars, or employ- 
ed in pilfering. ^ like proportion -would be found in nil our large cities, 
and throughout the manufacturing districts a far greater." (No. 29.) 

" When we have stated upon the authority of Parliament that there 
are above 130,000 children in London, who are at this time without the 
means of education, and that there are from three to four thousand 
who are let out to beggars and trained up in dishonesty, — even this re- 
presents only a part of the evil; if the children are without education the 
parents are without religion; in the metropolis of this enlightened na- 
tion, the church to which they should belong has provided for them no 
places of worship ; and ' two-thirds of the lower order of people in Lon- 
don,' Sir Tliomas Bernard says, ' live as utterly ignorant of the doctrines 
anddudefi of Christianity, and are as errant ajid unco7iver ted pagans, as if 
they had existed iji the •udldest part of Jlfrica.' The case is the same in 
Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Sheffield, and in all our large toxvns ,- the 
greatest part of our mamifactiiring populace, of the miners and colliers, are 
in the same condition, and if they are not universally so, it is more owing 
to the zeal of the methodists than to any other cause." (Ibid.) 

Most of the paragraphs just quoted refer to the year 1816: 
and lest it should be supposed that the representation of this 
journal concerning the state of English affairs at home, might 
be, at a later period, altogether of an opposite complexion, I 
will make some further quotations from the number for Sep- 
tember, 1818, and take them from the article immediately 
preceding the one in which it is said that " England wants ab- 
solutely nothing but thankfulness." 

" Children are daily to be seen in hundreds and thousands about the 
streets of London, brought up in misery and mendicity, first, to every 
kind of suflering, afterwards to every kind of guilt, the boys to theft, 
the girls to prostitution, and this not from accidental causes, butfi'om 
an obvious defect in our institutions! Throughout all our great cities, 
throughout all our manufacturing counties, the case is the same as in the ca- 
pital. And this public and notorious evil, this intolerable reproach, has 
been going on year after year, increasing as our prosperity has increas- 
ed, but in an accelerated ratio. If this were regarded by itself alone, 
distinct from all other evils and causes of evil, it might well excite 
shame for the past, astonishment for the present, and apprehension for 
the future ; but if it be regarded in connection with the increase of 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 289 

jiaupeiism, tlie condition of the manufacturing- populace, and the indc- SEC. VIII. 

faligable zeal with wl)ich the most pernicious principles of every kind v>^^^^.^^ 

are openly disseminated, in contem]:)t and defiance of the law and of all 

things sacred, the whole would seem to form a fund of vice, misery, 

;\nd wickedness, by which not only our wealth, power, and prosperity, 

but all that constitutes the pride, all that constitutes the happiness of 

the British nation is in danger of beinjj absorbed and lost." 

" The sternest republican that ever Scotland produced was so struck 
by this reflection, that he did not hesitate to wish for the re-establishment 
of domestic slavery, as a remedy for the squalid wretchedness and auda- 
cious guilt with which iiis country was at that time overrun." 

" So little provision has been made for religious and moral educa- 
tion in our institutions, and so generally is it neglected by individuals 
as well as by the state, that the youth in humble life, who has been 
properly instructed in his duty towards God and man, may be regarded 
as unusually fortunate. The populace in England are more ignorant of 
their religious duties than they are in any other Christian country." 

" They who reflect upon the course of society in this country cannot, 
indeed, but perceive that the opportunities and temptations to evil 
have greatly increased, while the old restraints, of every kind, have as 
generally iallen into disuse. The stocks are now as commonly in a 
state of decay as the market-cross; and while the population has 
doubled upon the church establishment, tlie number of ale-houses has in- 
creased tenfold in proportion to the popidatioji." 

" What then are the causes of pauperism? misfortune in one instance, 
misconduct in fifty ; want of frugality, want of forethought, want of 
prudence, want of principle ; — xvant of hope also shoxdd be added." 

" To work a reformation in the metropolis, indeed, is a task that 
might dismay Hercules himself; a huge Augean stable, which the whole 
Thames hath not water enough to cleanse! Yet the greater the evil, 
the more urgent is the necessity and duty of setting about the great 
business of removing it as far as we may. The points to be consider- 
ed are, in what manner we may hope to eft'ect (.he greatest alleviation 
of human misery, to mitigate the sufferings of the poor, to amend their 
morals, and to redress their wroncfs. Let no man think the expression is 
overcharged. If any human creatures, born in the midst of a highly civi- 
lized country, are yet, by the circumstances of their birth and lireeding, 
placed in a worse condition both as physical and moral being.s. tiiaii 
they would have been had they been born among the savages of Ame- 
rica or Australia; the society in which they live has not done its dsity 
towards them : they are aggrieved by the established system of things, 
being made amenable to its laws, an<l having received none of its bene- 
fits ; till this be rectified, the scheme of polity is incomplete, and while 
it exists to any extent, as it notorionshj does exist at this time, in this cnnn^ 
try, the foundation of social order is insecure." 

" It is said among the precious fragments of king Edward, that when 
prayers had been, with good consideration set forth, the people must 
continually be allured to hear them ; instead of this, a great proportion 
are actually excluded, for all the churches in the metropolis, ~uith all the 
private chapels and conventicles of everii description added to them, are not 
sufficient to accommodate a fourth part of tlie iidiabitants, upon the present 
system of conducting public worship." 

" Forty or fifty years ago, murder was so rarely committed in this 
country that any person who has amused himself with looking over the 
magazines or registers of those times, might call to mind every case 
that occurred during ten or twenty years, more easily than he could re- 
collect those of the last twelve months; for .scarcely a weekly news- 
paper comes from the press without its tale of blood. And as the cri- 

Vol. !.— o 



290 HOSTILITIES OP THE 

PART I. sis becomes more frequent, it bus been marked, if that be possible, 
■ _j- _ -^_- with more ferociousness, as if there were not only an increase of crimi- 
nals, but as if guilt itself was assuming- a more malignant and devilish 
type » 

" Looking, however, to those causes which are within reach of disci- 
pline a. id law, certain it is that the increase of crimes is attributable in 
no slight degree to the abominable state of our prisons, which, for the 
most [Kirt, liave hitherto been nurseries of licentiousness, and schools ol" 
guilt, rather i ban places of correction, so that the young offender comes 
out of confinement in every respect worse than he went in." 

9. The two presiding reviews of Great Britain having put 
the American people under the ban, those of the second rank 
naturally followed so grateful an example. I do not know 
whether I ought to apply this description to the " British Re- 
view, or London Critical Journal," a quarterly publication, 
which, in geinernl, is marked by nearly an equal degree of 
learning and ability with its predecessors. It maintains the 
same principles, religious and political, as the Quarterly, and 
lias, of course, entered the lists against the American repub- 
lic. The number for May, 1819, contains a copious article 
headed " Actual Condition of the United States," and pre- 
tended to be drawn from some of the late works on this coun- 
try. I have only to cull some passages from the article, to 
show what a rich source of correct information and benevo- 
lent temper has been opened to the British Public, in the 
London Critical Journal. 

" The government of Washington, identifying extent of 
territory with actual power and future greatness, continues to 
add lands to the immense provinces which it already pos- 
sesses; it eagerly embraces every opportunity, arising from 
the weakness or misfortunesof its neighbours, to provide fields 
for remote generations, who, it flatters itself, will one day out- 
strip all other nations in warlike exploits and commercial 
wealth, under the auspicious stars of the Union. The pre- 
sent rulers of America appear to think that they shall favour 
most successfully the rising fortunes of their country by pro- 
curing soil whereon American heroes and lawgivers may 
spring up in their order to fulfil their high destinies." 

" In the United States, a debt contracted in one state can- 
not be sued for in the next; and a man who has committed 
murder in Virginia cannot be apprehended if he make his 
way into the neighbouring lands of Kentucky."* 

* " The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges 
and immunities of citizens in the several states. 

" A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other crime, 
who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall, on the 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 



291 



" The slates of America can never have a native literature SJex. viu. 
any more than they can have a native character. Even their ^-#»-v^"^ 
wildernesses and deserts, their mountains, lalves, and forests, 
will produce nothing romantic or pastoral; no ' native wood- 
note wild' will ever be heard from their prairies or savan- 
nahs; for these remote regions are only relinquished by pagan 
savages to receive- into their deep recesses hordes of discon- 
tented democrats, mad, unnatural enthusiasts, and needy or 
desperate adventurers." 

" The steam-boat was hatched in Great Britain, and only 
acquired some small additional strength of pinion upon its mi- 
gration across the Atlantic." 

" We are informed that experiments of sailing ships by 
means of steam were publicly exhibited on the Forth and 
Clyde canal in 1787; and wereeither actually witnessed by 
Mr. Fulton, or communicated to that engineer, who was then 
a resident in that part of Scotland^ of which he was understood 
to be a native. In answer to some enquiries which we have 
made personally on this subject; we were told that Fulton was 
a native of Paisley, in the neighbourhood of which place, he 
had steam-boats constructed, actually employed both for ex- 
periment and use, and that he afterwards carried the inven- 
tion to America," &c. 

" In the southern parts of the Union, the rites of our holy 
faith are almost never practised." 

" When the American captains could not fight to advan- 
tage, during the last war, they ran away^ and in some instances 
most shamefully. Their Frolic for instance, after vainly en- 
deavouring to escape by flight, surrendered to the Orpheus 
and Shelburne without firing a single shot."* 

" The Americans may become a powerful people, but they 

demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be 
delivered up, to be removed to the state having jurisdiction of thf 
crime." — Constitution of the United States, Article IV. Sect. 2. 

* On the 28th of October, 1812, the United States sloop of war, 
AVasp, commanded by captain Jacob Jones, took, in forty-three mi- 
nutes after the first fire, the British sloop of war. Frolic, superior in 
force by exactly four twelve-pounders. The gallantry displayed by the 
American ship in the action, could not be exceeded, and she was much 
crippled in her rigging and braces. Two hours after possession was 
taken of the British vessel, His Majesty's ship Poictiers, of seventy-four 
guns, fell in with and captured them both. The disabled state of the 
Wasp, and the disparity of force, would have rendered any attempt at 
resistance on the part of the Americans, as ridiculous as the charge 
brought against them by the British Review. Let the reader now 
judge of the candour or the accuracy of this high-toned journal, when 
it talks of" their Frolic," and of the Orpheus and Shelburne, fee 



292 HOSTILllILb OV THL 

PART 1. want the elements of greatness; they may overrun a portion 
"*>^^'>»^ of the world, but they will never civilize those whom they 
conquer; they may become the Goths of the Western Conti- 
nent, but they can never become the Greeks. The mass of 
the North Americans are too proud to learn, and too ignorant 
to teach, and having established by act of Congress that they 
are already the most enlightened people of the world, they bid 
fair to retain their barbarism from mere regard to consist- 
ency," &c. 

The barkings of the innumerable minor Reviews and Ma- 
gazines are incessant, and may be compared to those of the 
prairie dog, of which we read in the accounts of the Missouri 
region. They deserve as little to be heeded. I will, how- 
ever, advert to one of them — the British Critic — co-ordinate 
with the Montlily Review, and long in the enjoyment of great 
consideration with the ministerial and high-church party. It 
has recently had a paroxysm of exprobration, on the occasion 
of reviewing Mr. Bristed's " Resources of America." This 
gentleman, a Briton by birth, educated at home, it has, like 
the London Critical Journal, mistaken, or affected to mistake, 
for an American, and in reviling the diction of his book, 
has held him forth as a sample of American writers. If an 
author so affectionately and reverentially disposed towards 
England, fared so ill, for allowing some virtue and prosperity 
lo the United States, these unlucky States had nothing less to 
expect than a merciless visitation. I would not undertake to 
repeat any part of the pasquinades of the critique, were it not 
that they form a proper sequel to those of the Quarterly Re- 
view, and complete the idea to be entertained of the strain in 
which we are celebrated in the British journals generally. 
The following extracts will suffice. 

" The Americans debated in Congress, during three suc- 
cessive days, whether they were not the greatest, the wisest, 
bravest, most ingenious, and most learned of mankind." 
' " The North American republicans are the most vain, 

egotistical, insolent, rodomontade sort of people that are any 
Avhere to be found. They give themselves «ir5." 

" The Americans have no history; nothing on which to ex- 
ercise genius and kindle imagination." 

'■'• One third of the people have no church at all. Three 
and an half millions enjoy no means of religious instruction. 
The religious principle is gaining ground in the northern parts 
of the Union: it is becmning fashionable among the better or- 
ders of society to go lo church." 

'' The greater number of states declare it to be unconstitu- 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 293 

tional to refer io the providence of God in any of tlieir public sec vill. 

*' The Americans make it a point of conscience never to 
pay a single sliver to a British creditor." 

" America is like a dissipated boy, combining the feeble- 
ness of early youth, with the libertinism of manhood; the cal« 
culating selfishness of declining years, with the decrepitude 
and disease of old age." 

" America is easy to conquer, but difficult to keep," &c. &c. 

Ribaldry of this description, which, by its absurdness, 
softens the indignation it is fitted to excite, can require 
no annotation. But I think it well to examine at once the 
topic of the first paragraph, quoted from the British critic, 
— one which has now the additional disrelish of triteness, in 
any English publication; so often has it exercised the wit, or 
provoked the spleen, of parliamentary orators, and periodical 
censors. We have seen that the Edinburgh Review talks of 
" the ludicrous proposition of the American Congress to de- 
clare herself the most enlightened nation on the globe." The 
Quarterly Review also, in the critique of Inchiquin's letters, 
descants scoffingly on this supposed proposition, and avers 
that it was withdrawn " only through fear of giving umbrage 
to the French Convention.^'' Mr. Alexander Baring refers to it, 
in his pamphlet on the Orders in Council, saying, that "the 
Americans gravely debated once in Congress, whether they 
should style themselves the most enlightened people in the 
world;" but he tempers the pungency of (he allusion, by re- 
lating how a distinguished member of the House of Commons, 
Mr. Wilberforce, seriously declared in his place, and was no 
doubt as seriously believed, " that Great Britain was too ho- 
nest to have any political connexions with the continent of 
Europe." By a natural progression, or diversity of reading, the 
story now goes, as the British critic has it — " that the Ame- 
ricans debated during three successive days, whether they 
were not the greatest, loisest, bravest, most ingenious, and most 
learned of mankindP^ This is the shape in which it will, 
tloubtless, be embalmed by the British historians. 

Let us attend now to the facts of the case, as they are ap- 
parent upon the face of the printed debate, and remain noto- 
rious to all who followed the course of our public affairs at 
the time. 

The French revolution had divided the American people 
into two great parties; the one disposed for an intimate alli- 
ance with France; the other averse from any connexion with 
the new republic, and more amicably affected to Great Britain 



294 HOSTILITIES OP THfc 

PART I. General Washington, by adopting and maintaining the pohcy 
*^*'~v-^-' of neutrality between the belligerent powers of Europe, and 
by giving his countenance and official sanction to Jay's treaty, 
so called, of 1795, with Great Britain, had rendered himself 
obnoxious to the leaders of that division of our politicians who 
favoured her enemy, and would have renounced her trade. 
Their antagonists in Congress were fortified in their dislike 
and dread of the French republic, and their predilection for 
the most friendly political intercourse and free commercial 
relations, with Great Britain, by the ill-judged machinations 
and intemperate language of the French representatives in 
this country, and the open support ^vhich the French govern- 
ment lent to the most insulting trespasses upon our national 
sovereignty. 

General Washington having announced his resolution to 
retire into private life, an election for a successor to the chief 
magistracy took place in 1796, and gave new animation to the 
feelings and plans just mentioned. At the close of the year, 
while this election was raging, if I may be allowed the term, 
Washington delivered his farewell address to the federal legis- 
lature, and in the house of representatives a committee compos- 
ed of five members, three of whom were friends of his adminis- 
tration, was appointed to prepare an answer to his speech. The 
draught of an answer which this committee reported, contained 
the following paragraph. "The spectacle of a whole nation, the 
freest and most enlightened in the worlds offering, by its repre- 
sentatives, the tribute of unfeigned approbation to its first citi- 
zen, however novel and interesting it may be, derives its lus- 
tre from the transcendant merit of which," &c. The phrase 
which I have put in italics found its way into the draught, from 
the desire of the committee to place Washington at the highest 
elevation possible, in opposition to the designs of some zealots 
of party in Congress, who aimed at diminishing the lustre of 
his personal reputation, and the credit of his system of politics. 
Moreover, France had not long before asserted for herself the 
pre-eminence over all nations in freedom and political intelli- 
gence; and the authors of the draught, with those of the same 
side in Congress, were eager to countervail this, as well as 
every other overweening pretension, which might enhance her 
influence in the United States. 

Mr. Sitgreaves, one of the most distinguished members of 
the anti-gallican party, explained to the house that " the light 
spoken of was political light, and had no reference to arts, 
science, or literature; that it was intended to make the com- 
pliment stronger to General Washington, and was to be re- 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 



295 



garded as a matter entirely domestic, and not as a public act SEC.VIII. 
for foreign nations."' v-.^-^v^ 

The answer at large brought into view the main political 
questions which agitated the country, and expressed an un- 
qualified approval of Washington's official career. A debate 
arose upon the general strain of it, which lasted two days. It 
turned chiefly upon the point of " the wisdom and firmness" 
of his administration, in reference to England and France, 
and embraced the investigation of all our relations with the 
latter power. Objection had been immediately made to the 
phrase which has furnished so much sport to the British wits, 
not only by the opposition, but by several of the most decided 
federal members. One of these, Mr. Thatcher, finding that 
it interfered with the principal purpose of obtaining an ap- 
pearance of unanimity in the homage to Washington and his 
course of policy, moved, at length, after it had been discussed 
with some copiousness, though incidentally, that the words 
" spectacle of a whole nation the freest and most enlightened,'"' 
should be amended so as to read "the spectacle of a free and 
enlightened nation," — ivhich ivas carried tcithout a division. 
In the course of the debate, a suggestion was, indeed, made, 
in the way of exception, that the use of the superlative would 
give umbrage to France; but this consideration must have 
proved the reverse of dissuasive for the majority, in the state 
of their feelings towards that power, with whom they so soon 
afterwards came to open war. They concurred in the amend- 
ment with such readiness, from the two-fold motive of facili- 
tating the adoption of the material parts of the answer, and 
avoiding what might have the air of national arrogance. 

Thus we see that the famed '■'■proposition of congress to de- 
clare America the freest and most enlightened nation on the 
globe," — the "act of congress by which the Aniericans esta- 
blished that they are the most enlightened people of the world," 
— was no more than an occasional phrase, hazarded by a com- 
mittee in the draught of a domestic paper, for purposes dis- 
tinct from that of glorifying the nation; which phrase, though 
equally suited to favourite aims of the majority of congress, 
was disavowed and rejected by that majority, chiefly because 
it savoured of presumption, and seemed to infringe upon strict 
national decorum. The transaction argues, on the whole, in. 
the congress, sentiments opposite to those which it has fur- 
nished the English writers occasion to impute; and, when we 
advert to the nature of the dispositions towards England, 
which were mingled with its origin, we must find their re- 
presentations still more ungracious and illiberal. An instance 



296 HOSTILITIES OP THE 

FART I. of the same scrupulousness is certainly not lo be I'ouud in the 
^^'^"^'''''^•' annals of the Briiisli parliament. I refer to the answers of 
that body to the speeches from the throne, and to the votes 
of thanks as presented by the speaker, — particularly the last, 
Mr. Abbot, — to the public servants whom it has distinguished, 
for self-applause and claims of national superiority, beyond 
which, no intoxication of pride, or reason of state can ever, in 
the civilized world, carry national pretensions. This refer- 
ence from an American will, perhaps, be thought a very defi- 
cient measure of recrimination; but it is to be borne in mind, 
that, however transcendant may be the British nation, in all 
respects, in the comparison with her " kinsmen of the west," 
her pre-eminence, in valour and science at least, over the 
other nations of Europe, is not so far incontrovertible and no- 
torious, as that, while constantly asserting it herself, she can, 
without inconsistency or assurance, make a standing jest of 
the single example of exaltedness which she charges upon the 
American congress. 

The obnoxious phrase in the draught of the American com- 
. mittee was, in fact, warrantable in itself, and might have been 
adopted, as it was meant, with perfect propriety. The com- 
mittee had in view civil and religious freedom combined, and 
the diffusiveness of political light, and elementary knowledge 
— points in which I think it hardly possible to contest the su- 
premacy of the United States. P^or proclaiming this supre- 
macy, there were strong motives derived from the peculiar 
situation of the country in regard to France, at the juncture. 
The confidence of a part of the American people in their own 
institutions and political wisdom, seemed to be shaken in some 
degree by the pretensions of French democracy, and to stand 
in need of such confirmation as the body of their representa- 
tives could furnish, for their protection against the most mis- 
chievous delusions. 

Although I may appear to have allotted already too much 
space to this topic, I must claim permission to introduce the 
observations which were made by Fisher Ames, in congress, 
on the occasion. They belong, in strictness, to its history. 

Mr. Ames said — "If a man were to call himself more free 
and enlightened than his fellows, it would be considered as 
arrogant self-praise. His very declaration would prove that 
he wanted sense as well as modesty; but a nation might be 
called so by a citizen of that nation, without impropriety, be- 
cause in doing so, he bestows no praise of superiority on him- 
self; he may be in fact, sensible that he is less enlightened 
than the wise of other nations. This sort of national eulogium 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 



297 



may, no doubt, be fostered by vanity and grounded in mistake: SEC. Vlll. 

it is sometimes just; it is certainly common, and not always '^-""^'''^-^ 

either ridiculous or offensive. It did not say that either France 

or England had not been remarkable for enlightened men; 

their literati are more numerous and distinguished than our 

own. 

" The general character with respect to this country, was 
strictly true. Our countrymen, almost universally, possess 
some property and some portion of learning, — two distinctions 
so remarkably in their favour as to vindicate the expression 
Oibjected to. But go through France, Germany, and most 
countries of Europe, and it would be found that out of fifty 
millions of people, not more than two or three had any pre- 
tensions to knowledge, the rest being, comparatively with 
Americans, ignorant. In France, which contains twenty-five 
millions of people, only one was calculated to be in any re- 
spect enlightened, and perhaps under ihe old system there 
was not a greater proportion possessed of property; whilst in 
America, out of four millions of people, scarcely any part of 
them could be placed upon the same ground with the rabble 
of Europe. 

" That class called vulgar, canaille, rabble, so numerous 
there, does not exist here as a class, though our towns have 
individuals of it. Look at the Lazzaroni of Naples: there are 
20,000 or more houseless people, wretched and in want! He 
asked whether Avhere men wanted every thing, and were in 
the proportion of twenty-nine to one, it was possible that they 
could be trusted with power? Wanting wisdom and morals, 
how could they use it? It was therefore that the iron hand of 
despotism was called in by the few who had any thing, to 
preserve any kind of conlroul over the many. This evil, as it 
truly was, rendered real liberty hopeless. 

" In America, out of four millions of people, the proportion of 
those who cannot read and write, and who, having nothing, are 
interested in plunder and confusion, and disposed for both, is 
exceedingly small. In the southern states he knew there were 
people well informed; he disclaimed al.l design of invidious 
comparison; the members from the south would be more capa- 
ble of doing justice to their constituents; but, in the eastern 
states, he was more particularly conversant, and knew the 
people in them could universally read and write, and were 
well informed as to public affairs. In such a country, liberty 
is likely to be permanent. It is possible to plant it in such a 
soil, and reasonable to hope, that it will take root and flourish 

Vol. T.— P p 



298 



HOSTILITIES OF THE 



PART I. long, as we see it does. But can liberty such as we under- 
'**^"'"''^^^ stand and enjoy, exist in societies where the feiv only have 
property, and the many are both ignorant and licentious? 

•■Was there any impropriety, then, in saying what was a 
fact? As it regards government, the declaration is useful. It 
is respectful to the people to speak of them with the justice 
due to them, as eminently formed for liberty and worthy of 
it. If they are free and enlightened, let us say so. Congress 
ought not only to say this because it was true, but because 
their saying so would have the effect to produce that self-re- 
spect which was the best guard of liberty; and most condu- 
cive to the happiness of society. It was useful to show where 
our hopes and the true safety of our freedom are reposed. It 
procured in return from the citizens a just confidence; it che- 
rished a spirit of patriotism unmixed with foreign alloy, and 
the courage to defend a constitution which a people really en 
lightened knows to be worthy of its efforts." 

The American Congress has had its full share of maternal 
abuse. It has been visited with the wrath and the pleasantry 
of tlie British writers, on other grounds than the one of which 
I have just treated. With the Fullers and the Lord Coch- 
ranes before their eyes, with the Wilkes and the Gordons fresh 
in their recollection, they have yet been bold enough to single, 
for the purpose of general detraction, out of our legislative an- 
nals, instances of disorderly deportment in individuals. That 
of Mathew Lyon and Roger Griswold, the only flagrant case, 
is vamped up in all the reviews and books of travels, as if 
personal violence were a new species of irregularity in the 
liistory of legislative assemblies; and as if the British parti- 
cularly furnished no case of the kind for admonishment. But 
we have only to open the parliamentary annals, to find pre- 
cedents of an early date, which might have sufficed for all 
purposes. Take, for example, the rencontre narrated in the 
following extract from the history of the House of Commons 
of the year 1678, in the reign of Charles II. 

" Debate on Sir J. Trelawney's calling Mr. Ash a rascal.'' 
Sir J. Trelawney said — " I rise up the earlier to speak, be- 
cause I wish this had been in another place; but perhaps in a 
more sacred place than this* if any man should call me rascal, 

* The Quarterly Review is (maiigre the example of Sir J. Trelawney) 
greatly scandalized at the story related by Birbeck, of a citizen of the 
state of Indiana having declared before a spiritual tribunal, that he 
should not wish to live longer than he had the right to knock down th-^ 
man who told him he lied. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 299 

1 should call him rebel, and give him a box on the ear. The SEC.VIII. 
cause of the quarrel that happened was this. Colonel Birch v^^'v^^fci-' 
was saying — lose this question, and he would vote for a ge- 
neral toleration. No, said I, I never was for that. And Ash 
said — I am not for popery: — said I— nor I for presbytery. I 
came to Ash and told him he must explain his words. Said 
Ash, I am no more a presbyteriau than you are a papist. 
Upon which I said. Ash was a rascal, and I struck him, and 
I should have done it any where." 

Sir Wm. Harbord said — " Sir John Trelawney has behav- 
ed himself like a man of honour.'''' Sir John was only slightly 
reprimanded by the speaker. 

The nature of this proceeding and the general spirit which 
gave rise to it, and made the punishment so light, is as little 
creditable, as the affair of Mathew Lyon, who was, be it re- 
membered, spurned by the whole American Congress. And 
it is quite as fair in me to go back to the case of Trelawney, 
as it is in an English writer to recur to that of Lyon. Our 
party-heats at the period when this happened, were also ex- 
treme, although not indeed fed by religious bigotry. 

If, however, a recent case is wanted, it can be furnished 
without difficulty. It is from the applauded Travels of Simon, 
In England, of 1809, that I extract the following history: 

" The House of Commons has exhibited lately a very cu- 
rious tragi-comic scene. An honourable member, a country 
gentleman, and, I believe, a county member, took offence at 
some slight he had experienced during the late examination 
in Parliament; and having made some intemperate remarks, 
supported by oaths, there was a motion, that the words of the 
honourable member should be taken down. This produced 
another explosion from the honourable member, who was or- 
dered by the Speaker to leave the house, which he obeyed 
with some difficulty. The House then decided that he should 
be put into the custody of the sergeant-at-arms. This reso- 
lution was no sooner announced to him, than he burst in 
again, furiously calling to the Speaker that he had no right to 
send him into confinement; and that the little fellow in the 
great wig was the servant^ and not the master of the House of 
Commons. The Speaker, in consequence of the vote of im- 
prisonment, was obliged to order the sergeant-at-arms to do 
his duty; and the latter, with the assistance of some oiher 
officers, succeeded in carrying off his prisoner after an obsti- 
nate combat., — the honourable member being an Hercules! 
What would the Parisians say to an affair like this in their 



300 HOSTILITIES OF THt 

PART I. Senat Conservatif^ and one of the members in grand costume, 
^-^■■^^'^^^^ giving battle to the door keeptr on the senatorial Jloor'P'''-' 

Lyon, (he aggressor in the atl'air of the American House of 
Representatives, was not an American, and it is probable that 
those who sent him to the American legislature were chiefly 
foreigners. The right of suffrage in the United Slates is sub- 
ject to few restrictions; it is acquired, after a few years' resi- 
dence, without much dilficuJty, by Europeans of every order. 
It would not, therefore, he matter of surprise, if men of vulgar 
manners and unruly spirit — strangers, with the slough of their 
native grossness and virulence, were occasionally found in our 
Congress. Besides, the American representatives belong to 
professions, and circles of society, in which the more elaborate 
and delicate courtesies cannot be supposed to be practised, 
nor self-controul to be acquired in the same extent as in what 
is called the fashionable and polished company of the British 
islands, where the legislators are boastfully said, to be trained 
to habitual politeness, under a discipline suited to their here- 
ditary gentility and affluence. Yet, it has so happened, that in- 
stances of members such as I have described above, are rare in 
the annals of Congress; and that as much decorum has prevailed 
in that body at all times, as in any similar institute of modern 
days. Since the era of our federal assemblies, the British 
parliament has exhibited more scenes of turbulence and inde- 
cency; a strain of personal reflection has been immemorially 
indulged in it, which w^ould not be borne in the former. Mr. 
Canning complains, in one of his late speeches, of '' the prac- 
tice in the House of Commons, of calumniating public men 
on either side of the house, by imputing to them motives of 
action, the insinuation of which would not be tolerated in the 
intercourse of private life." This gentleman allowed him- 
self, on the floor, (o stigmatize Mr. Lambton, one of the most 
distinguished orators of the opposition, as " a dolt and an 
ideot." In Feb. 1817, Mr. Bennet exclaimed, in his place, 
against " such ministers as the noble lord, Castlereagh, who 
had already imbrued their hands in the blood of their coun- 
try, and been guilty of the most criminal cruelties." Lord 
Castlereagh replied by giving the lie direct to his accuser. Up- 
on another occasion in the same year, when vilified by Mr. 
Brougham, the noble lord described the speech of the honour- 
able and learned gentleman as " a strain of black, malignant, 
and libellous insinuation." In reading the invectives of Mr. 
Tierney, and the bitter taunts of Mr. Canning, we feel a two- 

* Vol. I. p. 63. 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 301 

Ibid womler — at the licentiousness of the parliamentary tongue, sec. Tin. 
and at the impunity with which such cruel insults are olfer- ^^-"^v--^^ 
ed on so conspicuous a theatre.* 

The general style of altercation in both houses of Parliament 
during the American war, and at some periods of the admi- 
nistration of the younger Pitt, has never, I am sure, been 
equalled in the American congress at any stage of our party 
irritations. If 1 open the volumes of parliamentary debates, 
I fiill at once upon such specimens of senatorial temperance 
as tile tbllovving: 

"Lord Mansfield rose in great passion, — he charged the 
last noble lord, (Earl of Shelburne,) with uttering gross false- 
hoods." — JllmondPs Parliamcntarij Dchales^ Feb. 7//t, 1775. 

" The Earl of Shelburne relumed the charge of falsehood 
to Lord Mansfield in direct terms." — Ibid. 

"The Duke of Richmond animadverted in very severe 
terms, on an expression which tell in the heat of debate from 
a noble lord (Lord Lyttleton). He said no man could impute 
littleness, lowness, or cunning to any member of that assembly 
(alluding to what his lordship had pointed at Lord Camden) 
for delivering his sentiments freely, unless he drew the picture 
from something he felt witliin himself, as by illiberally charg- 
ing others with low and sinister designs, the charge could only 
properly be applied to the person from whom it originated." 
—Ibid. 



* The following, of so late a date as June 7tl), 1819, is a fair speci- 
men. 

" Mr. Canning said : The shuffiing; cowardh/, and evasive course recom- 
mended by the right honourable gentleman, Mr. Tierney, showed what 
was his veal object, Sec. 

" Mr. Calcraft here rose to order. Tie could not listen in silence to the 
foul, offensive, and almost unparliamentary aspersions which the right ho- 
nourable gentleman had passed on his right honourable friend, on him- 
self, and on all his friends around him. Sec. 

" Mr. Canning here interrupted the honourable gentleman. He 
thought that in debate there was tolerably fair room to give and to take ,■ 
und whenever the terms 'indecent' and 'atrocious,' wliich had been 
applied to the proposal of ministers were retracted, then, and not till 
then, should he retract the epithets which he had applied to the con- 
duct of the gentleman opposite. 

" Mr. Caicraft rejoined. Cowardly, evasive, and shuffling ! from a 
man too, who when he looked on one side on the honourable friends 
whom he had betrayed, and at the other side on the honourable friends 
whom he had lampooned, but with both of whom he was now united in 
place, might reflect, perhaps, on a more exact Illustration of such qua- 
lities. (Hear, hear, hear.)" 



302 HOSTILITIES. OK THE 

PART I. Mr. Edmund Burke said: — 

""^'^''"'^^ " Sir, the noble lord who spoke last (Lord North) alter 

extending his right leg a full yard before his left, rolling his 
flaming eyes, and moving bis ponderous frame, has at length 
opened his mouth. I was all attention. After these portents, 
I expected something still more awful and tremendous: I ex- 
pected that the Tower would have been threatened in articu- 
, laled thunder; but I have heard only a feeble remonstrance 

against violence and passion: when I expected the powers of 
destruction to cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war, an over- 
blown bladder has burst, and nobody has been hurt by the 
crack.'"— CobbeWs Debates, 1770. 

In one particular form of indecorum, I might almost call it 
enormity, the British parliament has gone far beyond what is 
known to our experience in America. I refer to the jocularity 
indulged on occasions the most pathetic in the facts, or the 
most solemn in the consequences for the interests and honour 
of the nation. 

During the debates on the slave trade in the years 1791 
and 179'^, when disclosures were made of crimes commit- 
ted by British captains in that trade, so dreadfully atro- 
cious, that even now they wring the heart, and overpower the 
imagination of a cursory reader, laughter resounded from 
time to time in the House of Commons; and that body listen- 
ed complacently to a speech, from Lord Carhampton, to which 
nothing can be compared, considering the occasion and sub- 
ject, except, perhaps, the show of dancing- dogs under the 
guillotine at Paris, so eloquently stigmatized by Burke. I 
will take, from the debate of 1791, a more particular exam- 
ple of this almost incredible levity which has distinguished 
the British parliament. 

"Mr. William Smith related the following anecdote upon the authority 
of eye witnesses. ' A child of about ten months old took sick on board 
of a British slave-ship, and would not eat. The captain took up the 
child, and flogged him with a cat; 'D — n you,' said he, 'I'll make you 
eat, or I'll kill you.' From this, and other ill treatment, the child's 
legs swelled, and the captain ordered some water to be made hot for 
abating the swelling. But even his tender mercies were cruel ; for the 
cook putting his hand into the water, said it was too hot. ' D — n him,' 
said the captain, 'put his feet in.' The child was put into the water, 
and the nails and skin came all off" his feet. Oiled cloths were then put 
round them. The child was then tied to a heavy log, and two or three 
days afterwards the captain caught it up again and said, 'I will make 
you eat, or I will be the death of you.' He immediately flogged the 
child again ; and, in a quarter of an hour, it died.' One would imagine, 
that the most savage cruelty would here have been satiated; but, ex- 
traordinary as it might appear, of this detestable transaction, the most 
detestable part yet remained. After the infant was dead, he would not 



BRITISH REVIEWS, 



303 



suffer any of the people on deck to throw the body over, but called the SEC. VIII. 

wretched mother, to perform this last sad office to her murdered child, s^-^r^^ 
Unwilling as it might naturally be supposed she was to comply, he 
beat her till he made her take up the child and carry it to the side of 
ihe vessel, and then she dropped it into the sea, turning her head the 
other way, tliat she might not see it !" Mr. Smith asked the committee 
of the House if ever they had heard of such a deed, on -which some of 
(he ijiconsiderate laughed, and on hearing it, he declared with great in- 
dignation, that he should not have thought it possible for any one man 
in that committee to have betrayed such a total want of feeling, and 
that he toas almost ashamed of being' a member of the assembly, in ■which so 
disgraceftd a circumstance had happened. " 

We were told by Sir S. Rotnilly (March llth, 1818) that, 
■' in the violence of party, cruelties which could not be heard 
without shuddering, had been treated in a British House of 
Commons with such levity, that it had been facetiously said, * 

that the outcry which had been raised, was only /or a Catho- 
lic's having got a sore backy 

When the question of abolishing the use of climbing boys 
in the sweeping of chimneys {the xvhite negro slaves of England^ 
as they are called by the Quarterly Review) was brought be- 
fore the House of Lords in the present year, (1819,) accom- \ 
panied with harrowing details of cruelty and suffering, Lord 
Lauderdale, who opposed the bill for their relief, got into 
a facetious mood, and put his brother peers in the same, by 
the following, among other appropriate and refined anecdotes: 
*' In some parts of Ireland," the noble lord said, " it had been 
the practice, instead of employing climbing-boys, to tie a rope 
round the neck of a goose, and thus drag the bird up a chim- 
ney, which was cleaned by the fluttering of its wings. This 
practice so much interested the feelings of many persons, that, 
for the sake of protecting the goose, they were ready to give 
up all humanity towards other animals. A man in a country 
village having one day, according to the old custom, availed 
himself of the aid of a goose, was accused b\ his neighbours 
of inhumanity. In answer to the remonsirance o. his accuser, 
he observed that he must have his chimney swept. Yes, re- 
plied the humane friend of the goose, to be sure you must 
sweep your chimney, but you cruel baist you, why dont you 
lake two ducks, they will do the job as well." [Laughingl. 

Whoever was present in the gallery of the House of Com- 
mons, during the examination of Mrs. Clarke, in the affair 
of the Duke of York, can well remember the sportfulness 
of the House, exercised in loose allusions, and pushed, from 
time to time, to clamorous merriment. We have witnessed 
no such edifying spectacle, whether as to the cause or the 
effect, in the American congress. Before I finish with this 



!304 _ HOSTILITIES OF THE 

PART I. topic, I will offer one case more of parliamentary insensi- 
^"^'*'^^^*^ bilitj, which, together with what I have already produced, 
may soften the horror of the Quarterly Review at the occur- 
rence of "one member's striking at another" in the American 
congress. I quote from the proceedings of the House of Com- 
mons for April 7th, 1819: — 

Mr. Bennet said — 

"That from the year 1781 to the year 1818, two thousainl nine 
liiindred and eiglity -seven women convicts, being in the proportion of 
one-seventh of the men transported during- the same period, had been 
sent out of the country. Of two hundred and twenty women sent from 
the year 1816 to 1818, one hundred and twenty-one were sentenced to 
the limited term of seven years transportation. Few of these women 
ever returned. Their only means of returning was prostitution. Many 
of the convicts had received judgment for capital offences, and many 
for minor ones. Now the act of the 9th of the King, chap. 74, had been 
<h"awn up on tlie principle, that persons convicted of minor offences 
ought to be confined to penitentiaries, and not sent at a great expense 
to a distant settlement. A learned and distinguished judge had told 
him, that on tiie last circuit he was about to sentence a woman to be 
transported, when his resolution was changed by the clerk of the ])eacc 
informing him tliat it was nearly impossible for women to return. No 
»;lassification existed on board, but petty offenders were compelled to 
herd and associate with capital convicts and hardened delinquents. 
This appearetl to him in the light of a gratuitous infliction of pain, 
wliich was unworthy of, and discreditable to, a great country. He must 
complain also of the maniier in whicli women were brought from coun- 
liv gaols to one spot, for the ])urpose of being put on board tlie vessels 
destined for New South Wales. One unfortunate girl had been brought 
from Cambridge, so bound in chains tliat it was necessary to saw them 
asunder; and another girl from Carlisle, sent up in the same way, on 
the top of a coach, had had her cliild torn form her breast! Wlien she 
was brought to Newgate, she was in the utmost state of torture. When 
once on board, no distinction was observed between tlie small and the 
great offender; the girl whose passion for finery had prompted her to 
commit a petty theft, was placed in the same bed with the sliameless 
|)rostitute who robbed on system. He held in his hand a letter written 
by Mr. Marsden, Chaplain-general in New South Wales, and stating 
that promiscuous intercourse between the seamen and female convicts 
had prevailed on board a .ship which had carried out a great number of 
women previoi\sly trained under the care of Mrs. Fry and others, to 
habits of morality and decorum. 

"Whether the new system of this year, with respect to the regula- 
tions on hoard female convict ships, would be better than that of last 
year, he should not inquire ; but he objected to a system under which, 
when the women arrived at New South Wales, they had no place where 
they could lay their heads." 

Mr. Wilberforce said — " that in the present state of the colony, every 
fresh addition to the number transported, while there was no increase 
of accommodation, must add to the misery and vice of those who were 
at present there, besides plunging the new comers into tlie same 
wretched state." 

"Mr. F. Buxton conceived that the case of the unfortunate female 
convicts deserved particular consideration. It already appeared that 
out of one hundred and sixty women employed in one maimfactory, 
there were one hundred and twenty turned out every night, and obliged 



BRITISH REVIEWS. 



305 



to depend, not to say for comforts, but for necessaries, upon the casual SEC. VIII. 
wages of prostitution." ■ _0- _ -^_ ■ 

Mr. Batliurst (one of the ministry) said — "that before he examined 
the speech of the honourable mover, he should allude to the argument 
of his honour.ible friend (Mr. Wilberforce), who had argued that no 
female convicts should be sent off" until the report of the committee 
was made, and he supposed, till some regulation was founded upon it. 
Nov/, if this argument were followed out consistently, it would go 
much beyond the present motion, as it would apply not to one vessel, 
but to all convicts, male or female But then it was argued by the ho- 
nourable mover, that it was difficult to keep men, but that females 
might be kept with great convenience, &c." \AlaugK). » 



Vol. I.— Q q 



S06 



SECTION IX 



OF THE EXISTENCE OF NEGRO SLAVERY IN THE UNITED 
STATES, AND OF THE BRITISH ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE 
TRADE. 

PART I. 1. I HAVE reserved for the concluding section of this first 
\^'>^^''*m/ part of my Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain, the 
topic of our negro slavery, the side on which we appear most 
vulnerable, and against which the reviewers have directed 
their fiercest attacks. With respect to their reproaches on 
all other grounds, enough, I think, has been adduced to show 
how strangely they have overlooked the lesson of the gospel 
— he that is without sin let him first cast the stone. They 
have aggravated the offence of malevolence by extreme folly, 
in selecting heads of accusation which may be retorted with 
complete success. This is as much the case in relation to 
the existence of domestic slavery among us, as in any other 
instance; and I shall not hesitate to avail myself on this oc- 
casion, as heretofore, of an error in reasoning, which springs 
as well from a corruption of political morals, as from an 
eclipse of the understanding. Of all Europeans, an English- 
man is the one, who should have most cautiously abstained 
from venting reproaches, that brought Africa and the slave 
trade into view: If there is any nation upon which pru- 
dence and shame enjoined silence in regard to the negro 
bondage of these States, England is that nation; but it hap- 
pens precisely as in all the other questions open to the most 
direct recrimination, that it is from her the loudest outcries 
and the sharpest upbraidings have come. 

We experienced this particular injustice, even during our 
colonial dependence, while she was actively supplying us 
with slaves, and endeavouring by the most jealous precau- 
tions, to secure this favourite branch of her monopoly. Her 
writers drew invidious comparisons between the situation 
and prospects of the mother country and those of the con- 
tinental colonies, founded upon the presence in the latter, 
of the multitude of blacks whose number and miseries she 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND SLAVE TRADE. SOI 

was daily and forcibly augmenting. When her merchants SF.riT ix. 
and travellers returned from this reprobate land, they insti- ^^■^''^*^ 
tuted similar contrasts; stigmatized the colonial slave-holders; 
and could not pardon the atrocity of retaining in bondage even 
the white convicts whom she had thrust into their hands. They 
spread, concerning the habitual state of the latter, as well as 
of the slaves, tales of horror, of the nature of which we may 
form some idea from the following passage, dated 1720, of 
the preface to Beverley's History of Virginia. " It hath been 
so represented to the common people of England as to make 
them believe, that the servants in Virginia are made to draw 
in cart and plow as the oxen do in England, and that the coun- 
try turns all people black who go to live there; with other such 
prodigious phantasms." The worthy and intelligent histo- 
rian, whose life had been spent in that colony, under circum- 
stances the most favourable to extensive and accurate obser- 
vation, bore a very different testimony, '.vhich may serve 
equally well for the present day — " I can assure with great 
truth that generally the slaves in Virginia, are not worked 
near so hard, nor so many hours in a day, as the husbandmen 
and day labourers in England; that no people more abhor the 
thoughts of cruel usage to servants than the Virginians."* 

Since our independence, slave holding has seemed to be 
fairly let loose to the Briton for the purposes of self-congratu- 
lation, and of the execration of American existence; as if, in- 
deed, England retained no longer a connexion with the West 
Indies; frequented no more the coast of Africa; and had ac- 
tually ^' in the midst of her rottenness, torn off the manacles 
of slaves all over the world." The negro has invariably 
figured in the reports of the writers of that nation who have 
condescended to visit this country, as a "goblin damn'd;" he 
is the chief bugbear which Lord Sheffield set up, in 1784, to 
deter Irishmen from exchanging the blessings of their domes- 
tic condition, for the miseries of the American; which Fearon 
was instructed to put forward to correct that " most mischiev- 
ous evil" the emigration of English artisans; and which Bir- 
beck has employed to draw into his own neighbourhood in 
the Illinois, such of his countrymen as persist in seeking these 
shores, in spite of Lord Castlereagh, and of the effigies of 
that evil " which counterbalances all the excisemen, licensers, 
and tax-gatherers of England." 

The Edinburgh Review having, in the 60th number, in the 
article on Birbeck's Travels, presented views tending to en- 

* Book IV. c. X. 



308 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. courage Ihis disposition to emigrate, would seem to have dis- 
covered that it had gone too far, and suddenly resolved to 
counteract the effects of its first representations. This is the 
natural explanation of the patriotic mood in which we find it 
in the 61st number, where every thing in Britain is repre- 
sented as inspiring confidence, and inviting contentment; 
while all in America is made to wear a sinister and repulsive 
aspect. The zeal of a proselyte is proverbially ardent. Hav- 
ing in a rapid evolution, set itself against emigration, this 
journal could, of course, " keep no measures" with negro- 
slavery in America. Here was the yawning gulph of crime 
and perdition, at which an Englishman should pause, as he 
was blindly rushing onward from the tax-gatherer, and the 
" menacing hydra (pauperism) that stalked over his native 
land." Better remain where he was, safe from the demoral- 
izing effects of command'wg slaves, and with the consolation 
at home, that he had '^ an inestimable parliament;" that" the 
next twenty years might bring a great deal of internal im- 
provement;" that " the apprentice laws had been swept 
away," and '^ the strong fortress of bigotry rudely assailed." 
Care was taken at the same time not to inform him liow large 
a portion of our vast country, is wholly without the institution 
of slavery; how small a part of our white population is indebt- 
ed to the labour of slaves; — that considerably more than a 
moiety of our whole population, inhabiting distinct portions of 
terri'ory, is altogether free from the reproach and the detri- 
ment of commanding slaves, while a great probability obtains 
that within " the next twenty years," no inconsiderable part 
of the remainder will enjoy the same exemption. 

Nor were these considerations, or the facts which I propose 
presently to adduce, allowed to interfere with the design of a 
sweeping ban against the American people, which should put 
every Englishman in a better humour with the "-rottenness" 
of England, by exhibiting her in contradistinction, as the tute- 
lary genius of freedom, and the country after which he han- 
kered, as marked with fouler stains, and doubly gangrened 
to the very core. I have already quoted literally the passage 
of the Review, which composes the grand arraignment, and 
will now repeat the several weighty allegations into which it 
is resolvable. They are as follows: — The institution of slavery 
is the foulest blot in the national character of America; its 
existence in her bosom is an atrocious crime — the consumma- 
tion of wickedness, and admits of no sort of apology from 
her situation; — the American, generally, is a scourger and 
murderer of slaves, and therefore below the least and lowest of 



SLAVE TRADE. 



309 



fhe European nations in tlie scale of wisdom and virtue; and, sect.ix. 
above all, he sinks, on this account, immeasurably in the com- ^-^'"^^^•*-' 
parison with England, who, become the agent of universal 
emancipation, may challenge the world to decide which of 
the two people is the most liable to censure, upon a general 
consideration of their demerits. These propositions imply, 
and may be converted into, others of this purport — that Ame- 
rica is chiefly to blame for the establishment and continuance 
of her negro slavery; that she could have suppressed it either 
before or since her independence, even with safety and ease; 
that it is a system of flagellation and murder, with which she is 
universally chargeable; that her congress has remained in- 
different to its enormities; that on her own part it is incom- 
patible with soundness of heart or understanding, and with 
the love or the possession of political freedom; that no nation 
of Europe, not the lowest and least, presents a similar or 
equally revolting spectacle of servitude; that England exhi- 
bits, within the pale of her power, a clear and glorious sun- 
shine of personal liberty and security; that she is in no wise 
implicated in the guilt of the American; that her disjwsitions 
have always been benign, and her hands pure, in relation to 
the unhappy race, whom we conspire to oppress and extermi- , 
nate; or at least, that if she has not always been busy in 
"tearing off their manacles," and assuaging their sorrows, if 
she has ever been taxable with a part of their wrongs, and 
stained with a few drops of their blood, she has, by her subse- 
quent temper and conduct, purged away the taint, and made 
ample amends to them, and to the cause of justice and freedom. 
America and Britain are here put at direct issue, on 
points which vitally affect national character; the American 
is cited, officiously and triumphantly, before the world, by a 
British literary tribunal on the Areopagus of Edinburgh, to 
measure himself upon them with the Briton. For the sake of 
historical truth, as well as for our own honour, and the repulse 
of arrogant and invasive pretensions, we are bound to appear, 
and answer in the best way we can, towards our own vindi- 
cation, and the confusion of the aggressor. There is no keen- 
ness or latitude of retaliation which will appear excessive after 
such provocation; and indulgence will be readily granted, for 
the same reason, should details of fact be reproduced, either 
familiar to most readers, or harrowing for the feelings of hu- 
manity. 

2. I am not sorry to have an opportunity, at length, of 
pleading the apology of the early American colonists, on a 



•ilO NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. score left unlouched in the pages which I have devoted to 
"^•^^^'^^ them in particular. What then is the first general fact which 
offers itself in the question? It is this — that England, who 
had been actively, eagerly, engaged in the slave trade since 
the year 1562, herself supplied her North American colonists, 
from the outset, with negroes whom she sought, and seized, 
and manacled, on the coast of Africa, and dragged and sold 
into this continent. The institution of negro slavery, "the 
great curse of America," lies, indisputably, at her door. 
What was her motive? The alleviation of the lot of her 
sons whom she had driven into the distant wilderness? No 
British writer has counted so far upon the simplicity of man- 
kind as to hazard this explanation. The motive was sheer 
love of gain; omniverous avarice; looking not merely to the 
immediate profit upon the cargo of human flesh, but to the 
greater, and permanent productiveness of the settlements 
whose staples were to be monopolized by the mother country. 
Let it be conceded, that the colonists received the auxiliaries 
thus brought to their hands, and whom they durst not reject, 
without repugnance, perhaps with avidity. But, considering 
the nature of their respective motives and situation, does the 
guilt of the receiver in this case bear any proportion to that 
of the trader? Can the seduced be brought down, by any 
principle of reasoning, to the level of the seducer? If the 
colonists, the southern particularly, in a new climate noxious 
to the white labourer, but favourable to the African constitu- 
tion; exposed to much physical suffering from other causes, 
and to so many additional influences depressing for the mind; 
liable to be called off from the culture of the soil by the 
irruptions of the savage native; — yielded to the temptation so 
immediate, of being relieved from the wasting labours of the 
field, and enabled to provide more effectually for their defence 
against the Indian; — if we suppose them even to have gone in 
quest of the negro slave, in a few instances, after the mother 
country had set them the example, and given them a taste of 
the relief which he could afford, — are they not to be considered 
quite as excusable as we can conceive men to be by any possi- 
bility, in any instance of the adoption of domestic servitude, 
or, indeed, of the commission of any wrong? 

It is a contested point whether the constitution even of the 
native white is equal to the task of cultivating the earth suc- 
cessfully in our southern states, in the actual condition of its 
surface; but in the first century of settlement, when the forest 
was still to be felled, and the climate, more noxious in itself. 



SLAVE TRADE. 311 

exercised a more fatal influence, the service of the negro was sect. ix. 
more important, and would naturally be thought indispensable Vi^'"v''^i-' 
by the colonists. 

This plea, too, may be urged for them, that, in common 
with the wisest men of the age, numbers believed slavery to 
be strictly lawful in itself, both according to natural and re- 
vealed religion. The same plea has, indeed, been advanced 
in favour of the slave-dealing nation; but, though we can sup- 
pose the conscience of the colonist, with the bible in his hands, 
to have remained at rest upon the mere purchase, and appro- 
priation of the negro, at his door, with the mode of whose 
acquisition in Africa he was unacquainted, it is impossible to 
imagine so entire a perversion and torpor of human reason and 
feeling, as is implied by the supposition that the former, while 
exciting intestine wars in Africa, trepanning the unwary, 
tearing the native from the centre of the dearest ties, exer- 
cising, in short, the most nefarious arts, and fell cruelties, to 
secure the African victim, could remain insensible to the cri- 
minality of the pursuit. Another bondage, the guilt of which 
none have had the hardihood to palm upon the colonists, I 
mean that of men of their own colour and nation, objects, for the 
most part, of the injustice and vengeance of faction and bigotry 
in the mother country, tended to reconcile them the more to 
the subjection of the negro whom she taught them, at the 
same time, to regard as of an inferior species. In every way 
did she familiarize and train them to that institution which she 
now charges upon their descendants as " the consummation 
of wickedness." 

3. It has been shown, in my second section, that the colo- 
nists became dissatisfied, at an early period, with the intro- 
duction of the British convicts among them, and endeavoured, 
though ineffectually, both by remonstrance and edicts, to arrest 
the practice. They conceived, also, before the expiration of ^ 
the seventeenth century, both disgust and apprehension at the "" 
importation of the negro slaves, and took, with no better suc- 
cess, similar measures for its repression. Some few of the 
merchants of the northern colonies had embarked in the trade, 
and a comparatively small number of the victims was held in 
servitude there; but only a very short time elapsed, before 
scruples arose among the conscientious puritans and quakers, 
and the whole system fell into disrepute and reprobation, 
Clarkson has not been able to show for Great Britain, its 
chief patron and agent, so early and pointed an expression of 
just views and feelings on the subject, from any quarter, as is 



# 



312 NEGRO SLAVERY ANP 

PART I. found in the following facts, which I adduce upon the autbo- 
"-^'^"''"''^ rify of public records, and in the language of Dr. Belknap, 
the historian of New Hampshire: 

" In 1645, the General Court of Massachusetts, which then 
exercised jurisdiction over the settlements at Pascataqua, 
' thought proper to write to Mr. Williams, residing there, 
understanding that the negroes wl>ich a Captain Smyth had 
brought, were fraudulently and injuriously taken and brought 
from Guinea, by Captain Smyth's confession, and the rest of 
the company — that he forthwith send the negro, which he had 
of Captain Smyth, hither; that he may be sent home; which 
the Court do resolve to send back without delay. And if you 
have any thing to allege, why you should not return him, to be 
disposed of by the Court, it will be expected you should 
forthwith make it appear, either by yourself or your agent.' " 

About the same time, viz. 1645, a law was made, "pro- 
hibiting the buying and selling of slaves, except those taken 
in lawful war, or reduced to servitude for their crimes, by a 
judicial sentence; and these were to have the same privileges 
as were allowed by the law of Moses." 

"Among the laws for punishing capital crimes, enacted in 
1649, is the following — ' 10. If any man stealeth a man or 
mankind, he shall be surely put to death. Exodus, xxi. 16.' "* 

In 1703, the legislature of Massachusetts imposed a heavy 
duty on every negro imported, for the payment of which both 
the vessel and master were answerable. In 1767, they made 
a more direct attempt to effect the object of that impost. A 
bill was brought into the House of Representatives " to pre- 
vent the unnatural and unwarrantable custom of enslaving man- 
kind^ and the importation of slaves into the province." In its 
progress it was changed, in consequence of the utter improba- 
bility of the success of one of that scope, with the royal go- 
vernor, into " an act for laying an impost on negroes imported." 
Even this was so metamorphosed and mutilated by the council, 
that the house refused to proceed in the business. It must 
have failed with the governor, had it passed both assemblies, 
and in whatever shape, as all the royal governors had it in ex- 
press command from the British cabinet to reject all laws of that 
description. The original instructions, afterwards published, 
of the date of June 30th, 1761, to Banning J. Wentworth, 
Esquire, governor of New Hampshire, contained this clause — 

* See the 4th vol. Massachusetts' Histor- Coll. for Dr. BelknapV 
account of Slavery in that province. 



« 



SLAVE TRADE. 313 

"You are not to give your assent to, or pass any law, impos- SECT.iX. 
ing duties on negroes imported into New Hampshire."* v^'vs^ 

The legislature of Massachusetts persisted, in defiance of 
the known policy of the British rulers; and in January, 1774, 
framed a bill, entitled " An act to prevent the importation oX 
negroes, and others, as slaves into this province." It passed 
through all the forms in both houses, and was laid before 
governor Hutchinson, for his sanction. On the next day, 
the assembly received a harsh answer, and notice of pro- 
rogation. The negroes of the province had deputed a com- 
mittee respectfully to solicit the governor's consent; he told 
them that Ins instructions forbade it. His successor. General 
Gage, when solicited in the same way, gave the same answer. 

The courts of justice in Massachusetts went farther than 
the legislature. Several blacks sued their masters for their 
freedom, and for wages for pa&t service, upon the grounds, 
that the royal charter expressly declared all persons born or 
residing in the province to be as free as the king's subjects 
residing in Great Britain; that by the laws of England no 
man could be deprived of his liberty but by the judgment of 
his peers; that the laws of the province relating to an exist- 
ing evil, and attempting to mitigate or regulate it, did not 
authorize it; that though the slavery of the parents should be 
admitted to be legal, yet no disability of the kind could de- 
scend to children. The first trial took place in 1770, and ter- 
minated in favour of the negroes. Other suits were instituted 
between that period and the revolution, and the juries invaria- 
bly gave their verdict for the plaintiffs. The case of the 
negro Somerset has been the subject of unceasing boast and 
compliment for England. Yet, if we consider the circum- 
stances on both sides, it must appear less creditable than the 
judgment of the Massachusetts court in 1770. The latter 
preceded the British decision by two years; it was given upon 
equally broad principles, in the midst of a long established 
practice of negro slavery; and in defiance of the system of 
the British colonial administration. We are told by Clarkson 
that, in 1768, an African slave prosecuted, in England, a per- 
son of the name of Newton, for kidnapping his wife, and 
sending her to the West Indies; and obtained no more, upon 
the conviction of the defendant, than one shilUng da7nages, 
and an order for the restitution of the woman wiihm six 
months; that, with respect to the doctrine of the immediate 
disenthralment of the African slave on his arrival in England, 

* See Gordon, Hist, of Am. Rev. vol. v. letter 2. 

Vol. I.— R r 



< 



314 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. Judge Blackstone discountenanced it when bis opinion was 
^-^"^^"^^ sought by Granville Sharp; that no satisfactory answer could 
be obtained from the lawyers to whom this philanthropist 
applied; that Lord Mansfield wavered, or rather inclined to 
the adverse sentiment; and that, until the trial of the Somer- 
set case, the great question had been studiously avoided. 

Legislative proceedings in relation to the exclusion of slaves, 
similar to those of Massachusetts, are recorded in (he annals 
of the other New England provinces. Pennsylvania and New 
Jersey trod in their footsteps, and early displayed a strong 
desire, arising from the same considerations, to plant an 
effectual barrier against the evil of continued importation; but 
their enactments were regularly overruled in England.* 

The condition of the slaves, in all the provinces north of 
the Susquehannah, was more exempt from hardship and abjec- 
tion than negro slavery had ever been known to be elsewhere, 
in modern times. In New England particularly, their lot was 
far from being severe. They were often bought by conscien- 
tious persons, for the purpose of being well instructed in the 
Christian religion. They had, universally, the enjoyment of 
the' Sabbath as a day of rest or of devotion. No greater toil 
was exacted from them than from the white labourers, who 
worked in common with them. In the maritime towns, they 
served either in families, as domestics, or at mechanical em- 
ployments; and in neither case did they fare worse than their 
white comrades. In the country, where they were much less 
numerous, altogether, and in no instance exceeded three 
or four in the hands of one proprietor, they lived as well as 
their masters, and not unfrequently sat down to the same 
table, as their emancipated brethren do at this day, in the 
interior of Pennsylvania, and tjje eastern states. For se- 
rious offences they were committed to the common houses of 
correction, to which disorderly persons of all colours were 
, sent. To be sold to the West Indies, was the most formi- 
dable punishment, with which they could be threatened or vi- 
sited. 

Popular opinion early and spontaneously proscribed the 
slave trade; disgrace attached to the character of those who 
were engaged in it principally or ministerially; cases of sea- 
men perishing by the homicidal climate of Guinea, or in con- 
tests with the natives; and of death-bed repentance at home, 
rendering audible and unequivocal the voice of conscience. 

* The law of PennsyUania, of 1728, imposing a duty upon the im- 
p'ortation of negroes, allows a drawback on re-exportation. 



SLAVE TRADE. 315 

contirmed the public antipathy. Had there been a general sect.ix 
readiness to engage in the traffic, the opportunity could not ^.^^v-^ 
have been found. The British merchants, and the Royal 
African Company in particular, which I shall mention further 
by and by, were too eager for the exclusive enjoyment, to 
allow the provincials to share in it in a material degree. The 
American vessels which appeared on the African coast, were 
regarded as interlopers, infringing a precious moaopoly. The 
Reports of the " Proceedings in the House of Commons on 
the slate of the African Company and of the Trade to Africa," 
inform us that " proofs were given by the Company of some 
ships trading directly from Virginia, and other parts of America, 
and disposing of their cargoes of tobacco and other commodi- 
ties, the produce of that country, on the coast, and in return 
purchasing slaves and returning whence they came, under the 
suffrance or rather open toleration of the governors and other 
subordinate persons in command." This fact of the tolera- 
tion of Americans was brought forward "to prove the injury 
the forts and governors were to the trade to Africa;" it being 
also in evidence that " the governors were all traders on their 
own account, or factors for principals in England, and endea- 
voured to forestall the market." In stating the value of the 
British exports to America, Lord Sheffield remarks, in his 
Observations, that there was to be added " between two and 
three hundred thousand pounds sterling, sent to Africa annu- 
ally for the purchase of slaves which were chiefly imported by 
British merchants into the American provinces." But it is 
superfluous to adduce testimony of this kind, since no histori- 
cal fact is more notorious, than that by far the greater portion 
of the negroes introduced into North America, was brought by 
British vessels, on account of British merchants, and under 
the special sanction of the British parliament. 

4. If the government of the mother country, to favour the 
British trade with Africa, laboured to prevent the exclusion 
of negro slaves even from New Hampshire, its policy on this 
head would naturally be of a most determined and jealous 
character in reference to the southern provinces. The history 
of Virginia furnishes illustrations as creditable to her, as dis- 
graceful to the British councils; and, though that history ija 
general may never have been examined by the writers of the 
Edinburgh Review, they cannot be supposed to have been 
ignorant of the following passage of Brougham's Colonial Po- 
licy. — "Every measure proposed by the Colonial Legislatures, 
that did not meet the entire concurrence of the British Cabinet, 



316 NEGUO SLAVERY AND 

PARTI, was sure to be rejected, in the last instance, by tlie crown 
"--^"^-"^^ In the colonies, the direct power of the crown, backed by a!! 
the resources of the mother country, prevents any measure 
obnoxious to the crown from being carried into effect, even by 
the unanimous efforts of the colonial legislature. If examples 
were required, we might refer to the history of the abolition 
of the slave trade in Virginia. A duty on the importation of 
negroes had been imposed, amounting to a prohibition. One 
assembly, induced by a temporary peculiarity of circumstances, 
repealed this law by a bill which received the immediate sanc- 
tion of the crown. But never afterwards couid the royal 
assent be obtained to a renewal of the duty, although as we 
are told by Mr. Jefferson, all manner of expedients were tried 
for this purpose, by almost every subsequent assembly that 
met under the colonial government. The very first assembly 
that met under the new constitution, finally prohibited the 
traffic."* 

I have suggested the circumstances which would greatly ex- 
tenuate any degree of eagerness, on the part of the first inhabi- 
tants of the southern provinces, in receiving the British slave 
ships. Whatever this may have been in Virginia, the opposite- 
disposition certainly manifested itself in her legislature, before 
the expiration of the seventeenth century. The learned Judge 
Tucker, of that state, whose notes on the Commentaries of 
Blackstone are so highly and justly valued among us, fur- 
nishes a list of no less than twenty-three acts, imposing duties 
on slaves imported, which occur in the various compilations 
of Virginia laws. The first bears date in the year 1699; and 
the real design of all of them was, not revenue, but the re- 
pression of the importation. In general, the buyer was charged 
with the duty, in order to secure a better reception for the acts 
in England, and particularly to render them less obnoxious 
to the African Company. The royal assent was first ob- 
tained, not without great difficulty, to a duty of five per cent, 
in this shape. Requisitions for aids from the crown, on par- 
ticular occasions, furnished pretexfs for increasing the duty 
from five to ten, and finally to twenty per cent. In 1772, most 
of the duties previously imposed were re-enacted, and the 
assembly transmitted, at the same time, a petition to the throne, 
which speaks almost all that could be desired for the confu- 
sion of our slanderers. Judge Tucker has made the follow- 
ing extract from it, in his Appendix to the 1* vol. pt. 2. of 
Blackstone: — 



Book II. Sect. i. 



SLAVE TRADE. 317 

" We are encouraged to look up to the throne, and im- sect, ix 
plore your nuajesty's paternal assistance in averting a cala- v.-»-~v-"w 
mity of a most alarming nature." 

"The imporlation of slaves into the colonies from the coast 
of Africa, hath long been considered as a trade of great inhu- 
manity^ and under its present encouragement^ we have loo much 
reason to fear, will endanger the very existence of your ma- 
jesty's American dominions." 

" We are sensible that some of your majesty's subjects of 
Great Britain may reap emoluments from this sort of traffic, 
but when we consider that it greatly retards the settlement of 
the colonies, with more useful inhabitants, and may in time 
have the most destructive influence, we presume to hope, that 
the interest of afeiv will be disregarded when placed in com- 
petition with the security and happiness of such numbers of 
your majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects." 

" Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most humbly 
beseech your majesty to remove all those restraints on your 
majeslyh governors of this colony, which inhibit their assent- 
ing to such laws as might check so very pernicious a com- 
merce." 

The petition proved unavailing. In (he first clause of the 
independent constitution of Virginia, "the inhuman use of 
the royal negative" in this matter, is enumerated among 
the reasons of the separation from the mother country. 
Mr. Burke, as we have seen in one of the quotations 
which I have made from his speech on the Conciliation 
with America, recognized her " refusal to deal any more in 
the inhuman traffic of the negro slaves, as one of the causes 
of her quarrel with Great Britain." I must claim permission 
to connect here with the petition, a statement subjoined to it 
by Judge Tucker, which shows that it did not cost the Britisii 
government a moment's deliberation to sacrifice "the secu- 
rity and happiness of such numbers of his majesty's dutiful 
and loyal subjects" to "the interest of the few" in England. 
" I have lately been favoured with the perusal of a manu- 
script copy of a letter from Granville Sharp, Esq. of London, 
lo a friend of the prime minister, dated March 25th, 1794, in 
which he speaks of the petition thus: " I myself was desired, 
by a letter from America, to inquire for an answer to this 
extraordinary Y'n^'imdi petition. I waited on tlie Secretary of 
Slate, and was informed by himself that the petition teas re- 
ceived, but that (he apprehended) 7W answer would be given.'''' 

That the inclination to impose the yoke of perpetual bon- 
dage on any part of their fellow creatures, if it ever existed 



318 NEGRO SLAVERY AMj 

PART I. among the majority of the Virginia planters, soon subsided, is 
— »''^''''fc-^ manifest from an act which is traced to 1662, declaring that 
"no Englishman, trader, or other, who should bring in any 
Indians as servants, and assign them over to any other, should 
sell them for slams, nor for any other time than English of like 
age could serve by act of assembly."" Thus early was the 
state of slavery prohibited, where it was not exacted by the 
higher authority: and the first opportunity was taken, after the 
declaration of independence, to extinguish the detestable com- 
merce so long forced upon the province. In October, 1778, 
during the tumult and anxiety of revolution, the general as- 
sembly passed a law, prohibiting, under heavy penalties, the 
further importation of slaves, and declaring that every slave 
imported thereafter, should be immediately free. The example 
of Virginia was followed at different times before the date of 
the federal constitution, by most of the other states. 

While the mother country withheld from the provinces the 
power of arresting importation, and incessantly added to the 
number of the blacks, the abolition of slavery itself was 
wholly out of the question, it was rendered impossible for 
the southern colonists, consistently with their own preserva- 
tion; and had it seemed practicable, and been attempted 
by any of the colonial legislatures, the royal negative would 
have been still more readily and vigorously exercised than in 
the case of importation. Even the West India Islands en- 
deavoured, from time to time, to limit the importation of 
slaves into their ports; and were counteracted by the ,/lfrican 
interest, as it was called, in England. In 1744, the legislature 
of Jamaica laid duties amounting nearly to prohibition; in 
1774, they made a similar experiment, alleging as their mo- 
tive, the apprehension excited in the island by the numbers oi^ 
the negroes imported; the merchants of England engaged in 
the trade, took the alarm on their side, petitioned against the 
duties, and obtained a royal order to the governor of Jamaica 
to discontinue the levy. 

In the history of the relations of Great Britain with the 
American colonies in general, there is no circumstance more 
abundantly evidenced, than her steady determination to main- 
tain her slave trade in the greatest activity and extent, what- 
ever might be their feelings of disgust or apprehension; and 
however gloomy the aspect which the continuation of it gave 
to their destinies. Their permanent welfire, their immediate 
comfort, weighed as nothing in the balance with the prosperity 
of the Royal African Company, and the plenty of American 
)iroducts. 



SLAVE TRADE. 319 

All that the English writers now pour forlh about the in- SECT. IX. 
trinsic horrors and miseries of negro slavery; its obvious and ^^^^/-^^ 
certain destructiveness to the morals of the masters; and its 
equally manifest and inevitable tendency to quench the spirit 
of liberty, and banish social order and domestic peace; ail, if 
we admit it to be true, recoils upon Great Britain, who, having 
these things before her eyes, yet, from the thirst of gain, — 
in order that iier commerce and revenue should receive every 
possible increase — opened this even vvorse than Pandora's box, 
upon the race of her ofispring in this hemisphere, and re- 
morselessly continued to replenish it, in spite of their remon- 
strances and terrors, as long as they remained subject to her 
controul. 

The act ^chich dissolved the indentures of servants enlisttng 
in his majestifs service in Jhnerica, is the only one in the re- 
cords of the British parliament, that looked to the " tearing 
off manacles" here. Not a single step was ever taken by the 
British government, towards the suppression or mitigation, of 
any form of bondage in the North American provinces. 

5. From the facts whicli I have adduced, we may confi- 
dently infer, that the North American provinces would, but 
for the oppressive and avaricious opposition of the mother 
country, have put a stop to the importation of negroes at a 
much earlier period than the era of their independence. We 
may even believe, that, with their general dispositions and 
views, they would have gone further; since the multiplica- 
tion of the slaves presented, next to the will of the British 
government, the most serious obstacle to abolition. We 
have scarcely room to doubt of the course which New Eng- 
land, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, in particular, would 
have pursued, in their more favourable domestic situation, 
and under the influence of their more rigorous principles, had 
they been free to act as these must have prompted. As little 
doubt can be entertained, that, if their colonial connexion 
with Great Britain had continued, they would have been com- 
pelled to submit to the continuance of the evils in question. 

The voice of religion and iiumanity crying out against the 
traffic in human flesh, was heard at an earlier period, and more 
distinctly, from the bosom of these colonies, than from any other 
part of the British dominions. Clarkson has narrated at 
large, in his History of the Abolition, the systematic efforts 
towards that end, of benevolent individuals on this side of the 
Atlantic. He was unacquainted with the pamphlet of George 
Keith, written before the end of the seventeenth century: H'V 



320 xNEGRO SLAVERY Ar^iD 

PART I. he lias celebraied the labours of Lay, Sanditbrcl, Wooinianj 
'^-^""'^^^^ Benezet, and Rush. The Scottish critics might have learned 
from him, that the wriiings which gave the first impulse, and 
exerted the widest influence, in the cause which they have 
united with him in exalting to the skies, issued from this 
quarter;* that a numerous society devoted to that cause, and 
composed of men of all rehgious denominations, was organ- 
ized here twelve years before any association for the same 
purpose had existed in England There, a multitude of wri- 
ters and speakers have contended for the justice, humanity, 
and evangelical character oi the slave trade: here, we have 
had no instance of a formal vindication of it, in any shape. I 
have never heard of an American speech or pamphlet on the 
subject, that did not acknowledge its atrocity. 

England renounced the slave trade on the 25th of March, 
1807, by a law which enacted, that no vessel should clear out 
for slaves from any port within the British dominions after the 
1st of May, 1807, and that no slave should be landed in the 
colonies after the \st of March, 1808. She has claimed the me- 
rit of having set the example of this renunciation to the world. 
Lord Castlereagh boasted, in the House of Commons, on the 
9ih of February, 1818, that, on the subject of making the slave 
traflic punishable as a crime. Great Britain had led the way. 
Virginia was, however, a sovereign and independent state, 
when she abolished the traffic in 1778. Pennsylvania, Mas- 
^ sachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, had the same cha- 

racter, when they prohibited it to their citizens, in whatever 
degree or form, and under the severest penalties, in the years 
1780, 1787, 1788. On the 16th of March, 1792, Denmark 
proraulged a law on the subject of the slave trade, which pro- 
vided for its total cessation on the part or in behalf of Danish 
subjects, at the beginning of the year 1803; and which prescrib- 
ed that all importations of slaves into the Danish dominions 
should cease at the same period. This law was carried into 
complete execution, according to the letter, and has been 
faithfully observed. It established, besides, some very salu- 
tary regulations for the improvement of the mind, morals, and 
general condition of the blacks in the Danish Islands. 

The American continental Congress, so called, passed a re- 
solution against the purchase of slaves imported from Africa; 
and published an exhortation to the colonies to abandon the 

* Scarcely any su{j£^estion on tlie subject, of real importance, has 
been made in England, which is not to be found in Anthony Benezel's 
work, entitled " Some Historical Account of Guinea." 



SLAVE TRADE. 3^1 

trade altogether. The third Congress of the United States, SECT. IX. 
under the present federal constitution, prohibited the carrying ^.^'-N-^i*' 
on of the slave trade from our ports. But in order to show 
more fully, the grounds upon which the American govern* 
ment may contest the merit both of priority and zeal with 
the British, I will transcribe from the general index to the 
laws of the former, the abstract of what it had done in this 
respect, before the date of the British prohibition. 

1. No citizens or others to build or fit out vessels, &c. to carry on the 
slave trade to or between foreign countries, &c — Vessels fitted out, 
&c. to carry on the slave trade, to be forfeited, &c. (22d March, 1794.) 

2. Two thousand dollars forfeit for persons fitting out vessels, or aid- 
ing, &c. 

3. Owners, &c. of foreign vessels, suspected of intention to trade in 
slaves, &c. to give bond, &c. 

4. Forfeit of two hundred dollars by citizens, for every person received 
on board for the jjurpose of being sold as a slave. Sic. A moiety to 
the person suing, etc. 

5. The importation of slaves into the Mississippi territory from foreign 
parts prohibited, under penalty of three hundred dollars for each 
one ; and slaves imported entitled to freedom. (7ih April, 1798.) 

6. Citizens or residents prohibited from holding any right or property 
in vessels employed in transporting slaves from one foreign country 
to another, on pain of forfeiting their right of property, and also 
double the value of that right in money, and likewise double the value 
of the interest in the slaves. 

7. Citizens or residents not to serve on board vessels of the United States 
employed in the transportation of slaves from one foreign country 
to another, &c.on jiain of fine SinA imprisonment, &c. (lOtii May, 1800.) 

8. Citizens voluntarily serving on board foreign ships employed in the 
slave trade, liable to disabilities, penalties, &c. 

9. Commissioned vessels of the United States may seize vessels employ- 
ed contrary to this act, &c. 

10. Vessels seized for trading in slaves, contrary to this act, together 
with tackle, guns, goods on board, &c. except slaves, forfeited, &.c. 

11. Commanders of commissioned vessels to take officers and crews of 
vessels employed contrary to this act, &c. into custody, &.c. 

12. District and circuit courts to have cognizance of offences against the 
prohibitions of this act. 

13. Nothing in this act to authorize the bringing into any state prohibit- 
ed persons. 

14. A moiety of forfeitures to informers, except where the prosecution 
is first instituted on behalf of the United States. 

15 After the 1st of April, 1803, masters of vessels not to bring into any 
port, where the laws of a state prohibit the importation, any negro, 
mulatto, 84c. not a native, a citizen, registered seaman, &c. under t,he 
penalty of one thousand dollars. (28th Feb. 1803 ) 

16. The persons sued under this act, may be held to special bail. 

17. Nothing in this act to prohibit the admission of Indians. 

18. Vessels arriving with negroes, mulattoes, or other prohibited per- 
sons on board, not to be admitted to entry, &.c. 

19. If any negro, &c. be landed in any prohibited port or place, &c, 
the vessel, &c, to be forfeited : A moiety of the forfeiture to the in- 
former. 

20. The officers of the customs to notice and be governed by, the laws 
of states prohibiting the admission of negroes, &c. and vigilantly to 
carry them into effect, 8cc. 

Vol. I.— S s 




322 NEGRO SLAVERY ANP 

PARTI. 21. The importaUon of slaves prohibited after il>e 1st ol January, 
s.,0rw->^ 1808. (2cl March, 1807.) 

22. Vessels fitted out or sailing, after the 1st of January, 1808, for the 
purpose of transporting slaves to any port or place within the juris- 
diction of the United States, may be seized, condemned, £cc. in any 
of the circuit or district courts, for the districts where the vessels muy 
be found or seized. 

23. Persons fitting out vessels, &c. to be employed in tlie slave trade, 
after the 1st of January, 1808, or aiding or abetting, &.c. to forfeit se- 
verally, twenty thousand dollars. — A moiety of the foi'feliure to the 
person prosecuting. 

24. Five thousand dollars forfeit for taking on board from any of tlie 
coasts or kingdoms of Africa, after the 1st of JanuaT-y, 1808, any negro, 
mulatto, &c. for the purpose of selling them as slaves within the juris- 
diction of the United States, &c. — A moiety of tlie forfeiture to the 
person prosecuting, &c. 

25. Vessels in which negroes. Sic. have been transported, their tackle, 
apparel, &c. to be forfeited, &c. 

26. Neither the importer, nor persons claiming under him, to hold any 
right to any negro, Sec. brouglit within the United State.s, Sic. in vio- 
lation of this law, but such negro, Stc. to remain subject to the regu- 
lations of the legislatures of the several states, S<,c. 

27. Citizens or residents taking on board, after the 1st of January, 1808, 
from the coasts or kingdoms of Africa, &c. any negro, mulatto, &.c. 
and transporting and selling them within the jurisdiction of tlie United 
States, as slaves, &c. to suffer imprisoimieiit from Jive to ten years, 
and pay a fine, from one to ten thousand dollars. 

28. Forfeit of eight hundred dollars for selling any negro, 8ic. imported 
from any foreign kingdom. See. after the 31st of December, 1807, Stc. 
A moiety of the forfeiture to the person jirosecuting, &c. — The for- 
feiture not to extend to the seller or purchaser of any negro. Sec. dis- 
posed of by virtue of any regulations of the legislatures of the several 
states, in pursuance of this act and the constitution of the United 
States. 

29. Vessels found, after the 1st of January, 1808, in any river, jjort, 
bay, &.C. within the jurisdictional limits of tlie United States, Sic. 
having on board any negro. Sic. for the purpose of selling them as 
slaves, &c. to be forfeited, together with their tackle, goods on 
board, he. 

30. The president may employ armed vessels to cruize on any part of 
the coast where he may judge attempts will be made to violate this 
act, and instruct commanders of armed vessels to seize and bring in 
vessels found on the high seas contravening the provisions of this law, 
SiC. — Masters of vessels seized, See. liable to prosecution, and to a 
fine, not exceeding ten thousand dollars, and to imprisonment from 
two to four years. — The proceeds ot vessels. Sec. seized, prosecuted, 
and condemned, to be divided equally between the United States and 
the officers and men, &c. whether of the navy or revenue cutters, and 
distributed as in the case of prizes, &c. The officers and men thus 
entitled are to safe keep every negro, mulatto, &.c, and deliver them 
to persons appointed to receive them, he. 

31. Masters of vessels of less than forty tons burden, not to take on 
board, after the 1st of January, 1808, nor transport, any negro, &c. 
to any ptn't or place whatever, for the purpose of disposing of him a.s 
a slave, on penalty of forfeiting eight hundred dollars. — A moiety of 
the forfeiture to the person prosecuting, Sec. — But nothing in this 
section to prohibit the transporting, on any river or inland bay of the 
sea, within the jurisdiction of the United States, any negro, Stc. not 
imported contrary to the provisions of this aet, in any vessel or species 
of craft v/hatever. 



SLAVE TRADE. 323 

52. Masters of vessels, of the burden of forty tons or more, after the 1st SECT.IX. 
of January, 1808, saiHng coastwise, &tc and having on board any negro, ^^^.^ -^_ . 
&c. to be transjjorted and sold as slaves, &c. to mulce out and subscribe 
duplicate manifests of every negro, &c and deliver the manifests to 
the collector or surveyor, &c. The master, owner, &c. to swear that 
the persons were not imported after the 1st of January, 1808, &o. 
— Tlie collector or surveyor to certify, &c. grant a permit to pro- 
ceed, &c. 

13. Vessels departing without the master's having made out and sub- 
scribed duplicate manifests of every negro, &c. on board, &c. or tak- 
ing on board any other negro, !kc. tlian those s])ecified in the mani- 
fests, to be forfeited, together with tackle, apparel, &c 

34. The master. Sic. to forfeit one thousand dollars for every negro, &.c. 
transported, &c. contrary to this act. — A moiety of the forfeiture to 
the person prosecuting, Stc. 

35. The master, &c. of every vessel of forty tons or more, sailing coast- 
wise after the 1st of January, 1808, and having on board any negro, 
&c. to sell, Sic. arriving in one port of the United Slates from another, 
to ileliver the certified manifest, 8ic. and swear to tiie truth of it, Stc. 
— If the collector, &.c. is satisfied, &c. he is to grant a permit for the 
landing of the negro, &c. 

36. Masters, Sec. neglecting or refusing to deliver the manifests, or land- 
ing any nt gro, &c. before deliveriiig manifests, &.c. to forfeit ten 
thousand dollars. — A moiety of the Ibrfeiture to the person prose- 
cuting, 8tc. 

It is seen by the foregoing abstract, that federal America 
interdicted the trade from her ports, thirteen years before 
Great Britain; that she made " it punishable as a crime," 
seven years before; that she fixed, four years sooner, 
the period for non-importation — which period was earlier 
than that determined upon by Great Britain for her colonies. 
We ought not to overlook the circumstance, that these mea- 
sures were taken, by a legislature composed in considerable 
part, of the representatives of slave-holding states; slave- 
holders themselves, in whom, of course, according to the doc- 
trine of the Edinburgh Review, conscience had " suspended 
its functions," and "justice, gentleness, and pity" were ex- 
tinguished. What are we to think of the British parliament, 
which suffered itself to be outstripped thus by such men? and 
when would it have abolished the trade, had it contained 
an equal proportion of slave-holders from the West In- 
dies.''* 

In truth, the representatives from our southern states have 
been foremost in testifying their abhorrence of the traffic; aa 
abhorrence springing from a deep sense not merely of its ini- 
quity, but of the magnitude of the evil which it has entailed 
upon their country. It was only at the last session of the 

* Mr. Pitt said (1792) that the " Parliament being now fully convin- 
ced of the cruelty and injustice of the slave ti-ade, it was their duty to 
])ut an end to it. Were the West India planters to be consulted they 
might think differently," &c. (Parliamentary History.) 



334 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PARTI. American Congress (March 1st, 1819) that a m£mber from 
^-^^^'^^^ Virginia proposed the following regulation, to which the 
House of Representatives agreed without a division. — " Every 
person who shall import into the United States, or knowingly 
aid or abet the importation into the United Slates, of any 
African negro, or other person, with intent to sell or use such 
negro or other person, as a slave, or shall purchase any such 
slave, knowing him or her to be thus imported, shall, on con- 
viction thereof, in any circuit court of the United States, be 
punished icith death.'*'' The rarity of capital punishment in 
the penal code of the United States, and the extreme aver- 
sion from a recourse to it, universally prevailing, make this in- 
stance a potent proof, of the sincerity of the dispositions, which 
we profess respecting the slave trade. Additional evidence 
not less striking, is afforded by the act which passed and be- 
came a law at the same time, and of which the printed abstract 
is as follows: 

"1. An act in addition to the acts prohibiting the slave 
trade. (3d March, 1819.) 

"The president may employ the armed vessels of the United 
States to cruise on the American coast, or coast of Africa, to 
enforce the acts of congress prohibiting the slave trade. Ves- 
sels employed, contrary to law, in the traffic of slaves, may be 
seized by the armed vessels, and brought into port. The pro- 
ceeds to be equally divided between the United States and 
the captors, whether by an armed vessel or revenue cutter. 
The captors to safe keep and deliver the negroes, &c. to the 
marshal, &c. transmitting a descriptive list to the president; 
and the commanders are to apprehend every person found on 
board the offending vessels, being officers and crew, and deli- 
ver them over to the civil authority. The president to make 
regulations for the safe keeping, support, and removal out of 
the United States, of the negroes, &c. delivered and brought 
within their jurisdiction, and may appoint agents on the coast 
of Africa, to receive negroes, &:c. A bounty of twenty- 
five dollars to the officers and crews of commissioned vessels 
and revenue cutters, for every negro, &c, delivered to the 
marshal, &c. Prosecution, by information, against persons 
holding negroes, &c. unlawfully introduced. Fifty dollars to 
informant for each negro, &c. thus delivered to the marshal 
from the unlawful holder, by judgment of the court, besides 
the usual penalties." 

6. If there be any two pieces of history which Great Bri- 
tain should wish to see extinguished, in particular, they are 
the accounts of the African slave trade itself, and of her'abo- 



3LAVE TRADE. 



326 



lition of that trade. Clarkson's relation of the Abolition is a si^CT. ix. 
memorial which, though it has left nothing that is any way v^^*'^*-' 
creditable in the progress of the affair, unemblazoned, and 
magnifies inordinately the lustre and utility of the result, still 
presents a balance of infamy, which, in my opinion, renders 
it desirable that the whole were expunged, for the honour of 
human nature. The enormity of the system of crime and 
cruelty which he lays open; the hardened depravity of the 
sea-ports which he visited; the pusillanimity and prevarica- 
tion of witnesses; the effrontery and security of culprits; the 
mean and wicked arts practised by the highest and the lowest 
of the kingdom, to defeat his purpose; the long resistance of 
parliament, after the fullest proof of the facts; the tenor of 
the speeches delivered there by some of the members in oppo- 
sition; and many other similar traits salient in his book, are 
far from being redeemed by the act of abolition, especially 
when attention is given to some of the grounds upon which 
it was obtained, and to the sequel, which I propose to notice in 
due time. We Americans would trust it to the bitterest ene- 
my of these States, to deduce a narrative of their abolition of 
the traffic; challenge him to lay on what colours he pleased; 
and, provided he woukl take the facts as his ground work, re- 
main assured that while the world possessed Clarkson's work, 
we could but rise in its estimation. 

As a general proposition, it is undeniable, that the nation 
which wrested the African from his home, and sold him into 
perpetual bondage, is as criminal at least, as those by whom he 
was purchased, and who may have retained him in that slate: 
It is no less evident, that after having thrown millions of ne- 
groes into one quarter of the world, and reaped the profits of 
the horrible traffic, it is not for her to upbraid the purchasers 
for using their bargain, and to summon them, in the name of 
justice, humanity, and natural rights, to relinquish at once 
their hold, at whatever loss and risk to themselves. Yet this 
is what is done towards the Americans, by the writers of the 
Edinburgh Review, in their character of Britons, and upon the 
foundation of the British abolition of the slave trade, it is 
t °refore fair to pass in review the facts which go to show, 
that they have no such privilege, but are obnoxious to the 
maxims which I have jusi stated. 

The English embarked in the slave trade in the year 1563. 
In that year they carried slaves to Hispaniola; and the first 
cargo was obtained with circumstances of abominable fraud.* 

* See the History of Hawkins's Voyage in Hackluyt's Collection, or 
\n \]\9 4tU Book, c. ii. of Edwards's History of the West Indies. Haw- 



326 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PAT^T I. It proved lucrative, and immediately, associations were tbrm- 
^-'^^'■"^-^ ed in England, among the most opulent and distinguished men 
of the country, to follow up the adventure. Soon, the object 
began to be considered as of national importance, and so early 
as the 16ih of James I. a royal charter was granted to a num- 
ber of eminent citizens of London, as a joint stock company, 
to carry on a trade to Africa, with an exclusive privilege. 
The private merchants, envious of the harvest which seemed 
to await the company, interloped upon the African coast, and 
so embarrassed ihe trade that the charier was abandoned. 
Another company was created by Charles I.; but it shared 
the same fate, from the same cause, — the cupidity and 
misconduct of the unlicensed adventurers. "On the acces- 
sion of Charles II." says Davenant,* " a representation b«ing 
soon made to him, that the British plantations in America 
were, by degrees, advancing to such a condition as necessarily 
required a greater yearly supply of servants and labourers than 
could well be spared from England, without the danger of 
depopulating his majesty's native dominions, his majesty did 
[upon account of supplying these plantations ivith negroes) pub- 
licly invite all his subjects to the subscription of a new joint 
stock, for recovering and carrying on the trade to Africa." 

His majesty's subjects obeyed the call with alacrity; and 
some of the most imposing names of the kingdom appear at 
the head of the ample subscription list. But poachers swarm- 
ed again, and pleaded their natural right^ and parliament found 
it expedient, in 1697, to lay open the trade for a term of years. 
The recrimination between the privileged and the interloping 
traders, unfolds abuses and enormities committed before the 
commencement of the 18th century, similar to those which 
were proved to parliament, when the question of abolition 
was agitated. It would be needless for me to detail the pro- 
gress of the African trade to the highest consideration and 
favour with the government; the contest maintained with the 
commercial nations of the continent for the monopoly of (hat 

kins was afterwards knighted by Queen Elizabeth, and made Treasurer 
of t!ie Navy. " The success which attended the first expedition to 
Guinea," says Edwsrds, "appears to have attracted the notice and ex- 
cited the avarice of the IJritish government. We find Hawkins in the 
following' year, appointed to the command of one of tlie queen's ships, 
tlie Jfsus, of 700 tons, and with the Solomoji, the Tiger, and tiie Swallow, 
sent a second time on the same trading expedition. In regard to Haw- 
kins, he was, I admit, a Murderer and a Robber. His avowed purpose 
in sailing to Guinea was to seize by stratagem, or force, and carry away 
the unsuspecting natives, in the view of selling them as slaves, '&c." 
* Reflections on the African Trade, vol. v. of his Woi-ks. 



SLA.VE TRADE. 327 

trade, and the successful advances made to this " consumma- SECT. IX. 
tion of wickedness." Factories were formed on the African v..>^v'">w 
coast; forts built; grants of money obtained from parliament;* 
and in the year 1793, twenty-six acts of that body, encou- 
raging and sanctioning the trade, couhl be enumerated by its 
friends. 

In the year 1G89, England made aregidar convention with 
Spain, for supplying the Spanish Wes'. Indies with negro slaves 
from the island of Jamaica. The twelfth article of the treaty 
of Utrecht (1713) "grants to her Britannic majesty and to 
the company of her subjects appointed for thai purpose (the 
South Sea Company) — as well the subjects of Spain as all 
others being excluded — the contract for introducing negroes 
into several parts of the dominions of his Clatholic majesty in 
America (commonly called El pacta de el assiento de negrus) 
at the rate of 4,800 negroes yearly, for the space of thirty 
years successively." 

To this compact there have been two pointed references of 
late in the British parliament, which I will rf^peat here in fur- 
ther explanation of its character. "By the treaty of Utrecht," 
said Mr. Brougham (IGih June, 1812) " which the execrations 
of ages have left inadequately censured. Great Britain was 
content to obtain, as the \vhole price of Ramillies and Blen- 
heim, an additional share of the accursed slave trade." 

Mr. C. Grant, jun. said (Feb. 9th, 1818) "that in the be- 
ginning of the last century, we deemed it a great advantage to 
obtain by the Assiento contract, the right of supplying with 
slaves the possessions of that very power which we were now 
paying for abolishing the trade. During the negociations which 
preceded the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, we higgled for four 
years longer of this exclusive trade; and in the treaty of Ma- 
drid, we clung to the last remains of the Assiento contract." 

By degrees the FiUglish merchants engrossed permanently 
two-thirds of the whole African exportation, and became the 
carriers for the European world. They either supjjiied the 
French Islands directly, or served as the factors of the French 
trader on the coast of Africa. They occasionally freighted 
their ships to France, to be manned and equipped in the 
French ports. They stocked Trinidad, and the province of 
Caraccas, by contract with the Spanish government; and, in 
the years 1786 and 1788, the Ilavannah. The Philippine 

* From 1739 to 1744, it annually voted to the African company 10,000/. 
sterling-, to pay their debts ; in 1744, the grant was doubled by reason 
of the war with France and Spain, 



328 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 



PARTI. Company oi" Spain, when invested with the privilege of im- 
'^''*^'''''^*-' porling slaves into South America, employed, by contract, 
British vessels, manned by British seamen. The re-exporta- 
tion from the British West Indies, for double profit, was so far 
encouraged, that by (he West India free port act of 1766, fo- 
reign vessels were allowed to carry from the free ports, ne- 
groes imported in British ships. England established a higher 
reputafion than any other power for skill in the management 
of the trade, and in the choice and preparation of the articles 
of barter. Among her chief exports to Africa were British 
spirits, rum and brandy, guns, cutlasses, and ammunition. Of 
three millions of pounds of gunpowder, which she exported in 
one year, one half was sent to the West Coast alone; and, as I 
have already had occasion to remark, several thousand persons 
were exclusively employed in Birmingham, in manufacturing 
guns for that market. In a Report of the Board of Trade 
dated 1775, stress is laid upon the necessity of encouraging 
the Irade of fire-arms to Africa. 

England employed from one hundred and fifty to two hun- 
dred ships in ihe slave trade, and carried off, on the average, 
forty thousand negroes annually; at times one half more, 
in the year. In 1 768, the number which she took from the 
coast between Cape Blanco and the Rio Congo, reached 
59,400, more than double the share that fell to all the other 
traders. Mr. Pitt said, in 1792, that Jamaica had imported 
one hundred and fifty thousand negroes in the course of twenty 
years, and that this was admitted to be only one-tenth of the 
traffic. Mr. Dundas said, on the same occasion, that, "in 
1791, the whole British importation consisted of 74,000, not 
less than 34,000 of which were exported for the service of 
foieign nations." 

The Parliamentary Report of 1789, on the slave trade, 
states, that the whole number of negroes brought to Jamaica 
from the year 1655 to 1787, amounted to 676,276, of whom 
31,181 died in the harbour, from the noxious quality of the 
drugs employed in making them up for sale. The Edinburgh 
Review made the following statements in the years 1805 and 
1806. 

" Before the American war, the Dutch used to carry, in 
their own boHoms, from Africa to Guiana, ten thousand ne- 
groes annually; and it is proved, by papers laid before par- 
liament, but which, we believe, have not yet been printed, 
that this importation was greatly increased during the last 
war, when those possessions were in the hands of Great Bri- 
tain. It is certainly not over-rating its present amount, to 



SLAVE TRADE. 



S29 



eistimate the yearly supply of negroes carried (o our conquered sect ix. 
colonies at fifteen thousand, — about one half the supply of v**'^'"'***^ 
our own islands, which is the subject of the abolition ques- 
tion."* 

"The 38,000 slaves exported annually from Africa in Bri- 
tish vessels, are only in a small projwrtion destined for the use 
of the colonies; above 22,000 are stated by the friends of the 
trade to be intended for the foreign settlements. To this must 
be added a large number of slaves carried by British vessels 
under cover of a neutral flag. From certain documents which 
we have had an opportunity of consulting, we cannot estimate 
these at less than 8000; and the supply of the conquered co- 
lonies considerably exceeds 10,000 annually. "t 

Authority is to be found for much higher estimates than 
these. I take the following from Anthony Benezet's Historical 
Account of the Slave Trade. 

"In a book printed in Liverpool, called, The Liverpool 
Memorandum, which contains, amongst other things, an ac- 
count of the trade of that port, there is an exact list of (he 
vessels employed in the Guinea trade, and of the number of 
slaves imported in each vessel; by which it appears, that in 
the year 1753, the number imported to America by one hun- 
dred and one vessels belonging to that port, amounted to up- 
wards of thirty thousand, and from the number of vessels em- 
ployed by the African company, in London and Bristol, we 
may, with some degree of certainty, conclude, there are one 
hundred thousand negroes purchased and brought on board 
our ships yearly from the coast of Africa. This is confirmed 
in Anderson's History of Trade and Commerce, lately print- 
ed; where it is said, "that England supplies her American 
colonies with negro slaves, amounting in number to above one 
hundred thousand every year." When the vessels are full 
freighted with slaves, they sail for our plantations in America, 
and may be two or three mon;hs in the voyage, during which 
time, from the filth and stench that is among them, distem- 
pers frequently break out, which carry off" commonly a fifih, a 
fourth, yea sometimes a third or more of them: so that taking 
all the slaves together, that are brought on boar'i uur ships 
yearly, one may reasonably suppose that at least ^en thousand 
of them die on the voyage. And in a printed account of she 
state of the negroes, in our plantations, it is supposed that a 
fourth part more or less die at (he different islands, in what is 

No. 1.3. t No. 16, 

Vol. L— T t 



330 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I called the seasoning. Hence it may be presumed, that at a 
'•>^^'">^ moderate computation of slaves who are purchased by our 
African merchants in a year, near thirty thousand die upon the 
voyage and in the seasoning. Add to this, the prodigious 
number who are killed in the incursions and intestine wars, 
by which negroes procure the number of slaves wanted to 
load the vessels." 

The Edinburgh Review has declared that England is the 
nation which "had most extensively pursued and most so- 
lemnly authorized the slave trade;" that she had been "prin- 
cipally instrumental in barring out from benighted Africa the 
blessings of ciiristianity and the comforts of civilization;" that 
it is she who had "checked or rather blasted in its bud the 
improvement of the African coniinent." The same strain is 
familiar in the speeches of Fox and Wilberforce. The latter 
reminded his countrymen, in 1814, in parliament, that they 
had enjoyed the largest share of the guilty profits of the slave 
trade. Mr. Pitt declared in 1792, that parliameni ought to 
consider themselves as the authors of it. His more emphati- 
cal language of the year preceding is recorded by Clarkson — 
" The truth is, there is no nation in Europe which has plunged 
so deeply into this guilt as Britain. We stopped the natural 
progress of civilization in Africa. We cut her off from the 
opportunity of improvement. We kept her down in a state of 
darkness, bondage, ignorance, and bloodshed. We have there 
subverted the whole order of nature; we have aggravated every 
natural barbarity, and furnished to every man motives for 
committing under the name of trade, acts of perpetual hostility 
and perfidy against his neighbour. Thus had the perversion 
of British commerce carried misery instead of happiness to 
one whole quarter of the globe. False to the very principles 
of trade, unmindful of our duty, what almost irreparable 
mischief had we done to that continent! We had obtained as 
yet only so much knowledge of its productions as to show, that 
there was a capacity for trade, which we checked." That 
capacity was, indeed, checked, not incidentally alone, but 
directly; for, in order to obviate all obstruction to the slave 
trade, pains were taken to prevent the Africans from culti- 
vating with success, the staples of their soil, — cotton, tobacco, 
sugar, and indigo. In this point, the English were, as in all 
others, pre- eminently culpable, since the number of forts 
W'hich they possessed along the coast, with districts round 
each of them, afforded them better means, than any other 
European nation possessed, of giving (he natives a taste for 
agriculture and the true objects of commerce. 



SLAVE TRADE. 331 

7. The general character of the British slave t^ade has been SECT IX. 
so pourlrayed by the highest and ablest men of the British v-^-v^*' 
nation, that in describing it, I am supplied, in their language, 
ivith the strongest which I could wish to employ. The suffi- 
ciency of the following testimony will hardly be questioned. 
In the Debate on the Abolition in the year 1792, Mr. Wil- 
berforce said, "■that of all the trades that disgraced human 
beings, this was the very worst. In others, however infa- 
mous, there were traits of something like humanity, but in 
this there was a total absence of them. It was a scene of uni- 
form, unadulterated, unsophisticated wickedness; never was 
there a system so big with wickedness and cruelty." In the 
same debate, Mr. Beaufoy said — 

" Who does not recollect, that, by the evidence which the 
slave merchants themselves have given at your bar, it appears, 
that such, on board an African vessel, is the rate of mortality, 
that if the march of death were the same in the world at 
large, the whole human race would be extinguished in four- 
teen years, and the earth itself be converted into one vast 
charnel house. Show me a crime of any sort, and in the 
slave trade I will show you that crime in a state of tenfold 
aggravation. Give me an instance of guilt atrocious and ab- 
horred, and the slave trade will exhibit instances of that guilt, 
more inveterate, more strongly rooted in all, diffusing a more 
malignant poison, and spreading a deeper horror. All other 
injustice, all other modes of desolating nature, of blasting the 
happiness of man, and defeating the purposes of God, lose, in 
comparison with this, their very name and character of evil. 
Their taint is too mild to disgust, their deformity is too slight 
to offend. The shrieks of solitary murder; what are they, 
when compared with the sounds of horror that daily and 
nightly ascend from the hatchway of the slave ship! 3 have 
heard of the cruelties of the Inquisitions of Portugal and Spain; 
but what is their scanty account of blood, when compared 
with that sweep of death, that boundless desolation which 
accompanies the negro traffic! Superstition has been called 
man's chief destroyer; but superstition herself is less obdu- 
rate, less persevering, less stedfast in her cruelty, than this 
cool, reflecting, deliberate, remorseless commerce." 

In the debate of 1807, Sir Samuel Romilly said, "The 
cruelty and injustice of the slave trade had been established 
beyond a doubt. It had been shown to be carried on by ra- 
pine and robbery and murder; by fomenting and encouraging 
wars; by false accusations and imaginary crimes. The un- 
happy victims were torn away not only in the time of war, 



332 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

rATiT I. but of profound peace. Tlicy were then carrieil across the 
^-^"^'"^ Ailantic in a manner loo horrible to describe, and afterwards 
suhj'.cled to perpetual slavery.'' 

Lord Henry Petty said, '• Tiie slave trade produced in 
Africa, fraud and violence, robbery, and murder. It gave birth 
to false accusations and a mockery of justice. It was the 
parent of every crime that eould at once degrade and afflict 
the human race. Afier spreading vice and misery all over a 
continent, it doomed its unhappy victims to hardships and 
cruelties which were worse than death. Cruelty begat cruelty; 
the system, wicked in its beginning, was equally so in its pro- 
gress," &c. 

Th( tone of the Edinburgh Reviewers has been in unison 
with that of the eloquent members of parliament. They have 
described the trade as "one long continuous crime involving 
every possible definition of evil; combining the wildest phy- 
sical suffering with the most atrocious moral depravity;" as 
one "which condemned a whole quarter of the world to un- 
ceasing and ferocious warfare; which annually exterminated 
more than fell during the bloodiest campaigns of European 
hostility: which regularly transported every six months, in 
circumstances of unparalleled affliction, more innocent persons 
than suffer in a centurv from the oppression of all the tyran- 
nies in the world." In the 24th number of the Review, a 
picture was presented so hideous and so faithful, that the re- 
collection of it would seem sufficient to have stayed any hand 
from hazarding, in the same frame, a comparison between the 
humanity of England and that of any other nation, in refer- 
ence to the sons of Afiica. 

" The history of the slave trade is the history of a war of 
more than two centuries, waged by men against human na- 
ture; a war too, carried on, not by ignorance and barbarism 
against knowledge and civilization; not by half famished 
multitudes against a race blessed with all the arts of life, and 
softened and effeminated by luxury; but, as some strange non- 
descript in iniquity, waged by unprovoked strength against 
uninjuring helplessness, and with all the powers Avhich long 
periods of security and equal law had enabled the assailants 
to develop, — in order to make barbarism more barbarous,, 
and to add to the want of political freedom the most dreadful 
and debasing personal suffering. Thus all the effects and in- 
fluences of freedom were employed to enslave; the gifts of 
knowledge to prev^ent the possibility of illumination; and 
powers, which could not have existed but in consequence of 
morality and religion, to perpetuate the sensual vices, and to 



SLAVE TRADE. 

ward off the emancipating blow of Christianity; and, as if sect. ix. 
this were not enough, positive h»ws were added by the best ^^^^y^^^ 
and freest nation of Christendom, and powers entrusted to the 
basest part of its population, for purposes wliich would almost 
necessarily make the best men become the worst." 

8. However strong these general representations, they arc 
more than confirmed, by the details of which the world had 
the fullest proof. It was remarked with great truth by Mr. 
William Smith in the debate of 1792, in the House of Com- 
mons, that numberless facts had been related by eye witnesses, 
to Parliament, so dreadfully atrocious, that the very magni- 
tude of the crimes rendered them incredible to others, 1 will 
select some of the particular features in the character of the 
trade, and a few of the single incidents, as they were related 
in Parliament, upon such evidence as no longer to admit of 
contradiction. Mr. Wilberforce said, " it was well known 
that it was customary to set fire to whole villages in Africa, 
for the purpose of throwing the inhabitants into confusion, and 
taking them as they fled from the flames. Every possible 
fraud was put in practice to deceive the ignorance of the na- 
tives, by false weights and measures, adulterated commodi- 
ties, and other impositions of the sort." 

" On the windward coast an agent was sent to establish a 
settlement in the interior country, and to send down to the 
ships such slaves as he might be able to obtain; the orders he 
received from his captain were a very model of conciseness 
and perspicuity; ' he was to encourage the chieftains, by 
brandy and gunpowder, to go to war, and make slaves.' He 
punctually performed his part, the chieftains were not back- 
ward on theirs; the neighbouring villages were ransacked, 
being surrounded and set on fire in the night; their inhabitants 
were seized when making their escape, and being brought to 
the agent, were by him forwarded, men, women, and chil- 
dren, to his principal on the const. Mr. How, a botanist, 
who, in the service of government, visited that country witli 
captain Thomson, gave in evidence, that being at one of the 
subordinate settlements on the Gold Coast, on the arrival of 
an order for slaves from Cape Coast Castle, the native chief 
immediately sent forth his armed parties, who, in the night, 
brought in a supply of all descriptions, and the necessary as- 
sortment was next day sent off, according to the order. The 
wide extent of the African coast furnished but one uniform de- 
tail of similar instances of barbarity." 

'• The exciting of wars," added the same speaker, " be- 
tween neighbouring stales, is almost the slightest of the evils 



3vi4 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. Africa is doomed lo suffer from this trade. Still more into- 
'^o^^v-'ifc^ lerable are those acts of outrage which we are continually sti- 
mulating the kings to commit on iheir own subjects. A 
chieftain, to procure the articles for the gratification of appe- 
tites which we have diligently and too successfully taught 
them to indulge, being too weak or too timid to attack his 
neighbours, sends a party of soldiers by night to one of his 
own defenceless villages; Ihey set fire to it, and hurry the in- 
habitants to the ships of the traders, who, hovering like vul- 
tures over these scenes of carnage, are ever ready for their 
prey. We are perpetually told of villages half consumed, 
and bearing every mark of recent destruction. Whitherso- 
ever a man goes, be it lo the watering place or to the field, he 
is not safe. He can never quit his house without fear of 
being carried off by fraud or by force. When the chieftains 
are going up the country to make war in order to procure 
slaves, they are supplied with muskets and cutlasses by the 
traders." 

Mr. Pitt said on the same occasion — " Can we hesitate in 
deciding whether the wars in Africa are their wars or ours. 
It was our arms in the river Cameroon put into the hands of 
the negro trader, that furnished him with the means of push- 
ing his trade, and I have no more doubt they are British arms 
put into the hands of Africans, which promote universal war 
and desolation, than I can doubt of their having done so, in 
that individual instance." 

Mr. Wilberforce related that in the year 1789, in the 
neighbourhood of the river Cameroon, the master of a Liver- 
pool ship of the name of Bibby, fraudulently carried off thirty- 
two relations of one of the chiefs of the country, who had been 
put on board as pledges for goods: and to illustrate the fami- 
liarity of the practice, he quoted the following anecdote. 
" When General Rooke commanded in his majesty's settle- 
ment at Goree, some of the subjects of a neighbouring king, 
with whom he was on terms of amity, came to pay him a 
friendly visit; there were from 100 to 150 of them, men, wo- 
men, and children; all was gaiety and merriment, it was a 
scene to gladden the saddest, and to soften the hardest 
heart: but a slave captain, ever faithful to the interest of his 
employers, is not so soon thrown off his guard; with what 
astonishment would the House hear, that in the midst of this 
festivity, it was proposed to general Rooke to seize the whole 
of this unsuspecting multitude, hurry them on board the ships, 
and carry them off to the West Indies. It was not merely one 
man, but three, who were bold enough to venture on such a 



SLAVE TRADJ2. 335 

pi'oposal. Three English slave captains preferred it as their sect.ix. 
joint request, alleging the precedenl of a former governor^ icho ^-*^/-^ 
in a similar case^ liud consenledP'' &c. 

One more of the numberless r.uihonlicaled occurrences of 
this nature, will suffice. " Mr. VViiberforce said that these 
enormities were increasing; for, no longer ago than last Au- 
gust, (1791) when that House was debating on the subject of 
this very trade, six British vessels had anchored off the town 
of Calabar, in Africa, a town which seemed devoted to mis- 
fortune. It appeared, from the report, that the natives had 
raised tiie price of slaves. The captains consulting together, 
agreed to fire on the town, to compel ihem lo lower the price 
of their countrymen. To heighten, if possible, the shame of 
this proceeding, they were prevented for some time, from 
effecting (heir purpose, by the presence of a French captain, 
who refused to join in their measures, and purchased at the 
high price which had been put upon the slaves." 

" However, in the morning ihey commenced a fire which 
lasted for three hours. During the consternation, the wretch- 
ed inhabitants were seen making their escape in every direc- 
tion. In the evening, the attack was renewed, which con- 
tinued until they agreed to sell their slaves at the price stipu- 
lated by the captains. In this attack upwards of twenty per- 
sons were destroyed." 

The situation of the slaves on board ship, or what is com- 
monly called the middle passage, even surpassed in horror the 
depravity and cruelty exhibited in the original acquisition. 
Lord Grenville declared in 1806, in the House of Lords, 
" that in the transportation of the negroes, there was a greater 
portion of misery condensed within a smaller space, than had 
ever existed in the known world. This he had said on a for- 
mer occasion, and would repeat." Mr Fox observed, in the 
House of Commons, that "' the acts of barbarity, proved upon 
the slave captains in the course of the voyiiges, were so ex(ra- 
vagant that they had been attributed to insanity." The sir.gie 
instance of the British ship Zong, in 1781, from which the 
captain threw into the sea one hundred and ihirly-two slaves, 
alive, in order to defraud ilie underwriters in England, gives a 
truly demoniac character to the temper and conduct of the 
commanders of the slave ships. The assertion of Lord Gren- 
ville, just quoted, would seem to be warranted h\ the facts 
which were in undeniable evidence before the committees of 
Parliament. With respect to the middle passage — apart from 
the administration of the ship's officers, still more barbarous, 
than the situation was deplorable, — the principal features of 



336 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I.' it are these, according to the testimony of witnesses produced 

^•^""^^^^-^ on the side of the trade. 

Every slave, whatever his size might be, had only five feet 
six inches in length, and sixteen inches in breadth, to lie in. 
The floor was covered with bodies stoAved or packed accord- 
ing to this allowance. But between the floor and the deck or 
ceiling were platforms, or broad shelves, in the midway, which 
were covered with bodies also. The height from the floor to 
the ceiling, within which space the bodies on the floor and 
those on the platforms lay, seldom exceeded five feet two 
inches, and in some cases it did not exceed four feet. 

The men were chained, two and two together, by their 
hands and feet, and were chained also by means of ring-bolts, 
which were fastened to the deck. They were confined in this 
manner at least all the time they remained upon the coast, 
which was from six weeks to six months, as it might happen. 
Their allowance consisted of one pint of water a day to each 
person, and they were fed twice a day with yams and horse- 
beans. Instruments were kept on board to force them to eat, 
when sulky. 

After meals, they jumped up in their irons for exercise. 
This was so necessary for their health that they were whipped 
if they refused to do it, and often danced thus under the lash. 
They were usually fifteen or sixteen hours below deck out of 
twenty-four. In rainy weather they could not be brought up 
for two or three days together. If the ship was full, their 
situation was then inexpressibly distressing. They drew their 
breath with anxious and laborious efforts. Thus crammed 
together, some died of suffocation, and the filth and noisome- 
ness occasioned putrid and fatal disorders; so that the officers 
who inspected them in a morning, had occasionally to pick dead 
slaves out of their rows, and to unchain their carcases from 
the bodies of their fellow-sufferers, to whom they were fas- 
tened. 

The scenes and practices in the next stage of the sacrifice, 
— the sale in the West India port, — rivalled those of the 
transportation. The slaves who survived the passage, fre- 
quently arrived in a sickly and disordered state, and then they 
were made up for the inarket, by the means of astringents, 
. washes, mercurial ointments, and repelling drugs, so that 
their wounds and diseases might be hid. Many people in the 
islands, in Jamaica particularly, were accustomed to speculate 
in the purchase of those who were left after the first day's 
sale. They then carried them out into the country, and re- 
tailed them there. A most respectable witness declared that 



SLAVE TRADE.. 337 

he had seen these landed hi a very wretched state, sametimes SECT. IX. 
in the agonies of death, and sold as low as a dollar, and that ^-^^-^ 
he had known several to expire in the piazzas of the vendue- 
master. 

9. In the list of the evils and atrocities accompanying this 
trade, one of the most certain and shocking, was the extensive 
mortality, independent of that inseparable from the wars and 
devastations in Africa, to which it gave rise. We read in 
Macpherson's Annals, that the whole number of negroes de- 
livered, fell short of the number shipped, twenty or thirty per 
cent; that in Jamaica, if tifteen out of twenty new negroes 
bought, were alive at the end of three years, the purchaser was 
thought very lucky. We are told by the Edinburgh Review 
(No. 8) that upon an average no less than seventeen in an 
hundred died before they were landed, and that there was a 
further loss of thirty-three in the seasoning, arising chiefly 
from diseases contracted during the voyage. " Of the Afri- 
cans," says Dr. Dickson, in his Mitigation of Slavery, " above 
one-fourth perished on the voyage to the West Indies; and 4§ 
per cent, more, being nearly the annual mortality of London, 
died on an average, in the fortnight intervening between the 
day of entry and sale. To close this awful triumph of the king 
of terrors, between one-third and one-half, or about two in five 
were lost in "the seasoning," within the three first years." 
The representations of Mr. Wilberforce on this head were never 
invalidated, and are as follows. " It would be found," he 
said, " upon an average of all the ships, upon which evidence 
had been given, that, exclusively of such as perished before 
they sailed from Africa, not less than twelve and a half per 
cent, died on their passage; besides these, the Jamaica report 
stated, that four and a half per cent, died while in the har- 
bours, or on shore, before the day of sale, which was only 
about the space of twelve or fourteen days after their arrival 
there, and one-third more died in the seasoning, and this in a 
climate exactly similar to their own, in which they were ac- 
knowledged to be healthy. Thus out of every lot of one hun- 
dred shipped from Africa, seventeen died in about nine urekSj 
and not more than fifty lived to become effective labourers in 
our islands.'''' 

Mr. Wilberforce adduced, on another occasion, upon the 
authority of indisputable evidence, some cases of par'icular 
mortality, of which I will transcribe his relation, because it 
brings into view additional attributes of the trade. 

"It was no longer ago than in the vear 1788, that ^r. 
Vol. I.— U u 



338 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I, Isaac Wilson, whose intelligent and candid manner of giving 
^'^"^''''^^ his evidence, could not but impress the committee with a high 
opinion of him, was doomed to witness scenes as deeply dis- 
tressing as almost ever occurred in the annals of the slave 
trade." 

" His ship was a vessel of three hundred and seventy tons, 
and she had on board six hundred and two slaves, a number 
greater than we at present allow, but rather less, I think, than 
what was asserted by the slave merchants to be necessary, in 
order to carry on their trade to any tolerable profit. Out of 
these six hundred and two she lost one hundred and fifty-five. 
I will mention the mortality also of three or four more vessels, 
which were in company with her, and belonged to the same 
owner. One of them brought four hundred and fifty, and 
buried two hundred; another brought four hundred and sixty- 
six, and buried seventy-three; another brought five hundred 
and forty-six, and buried one hundred and eighty-eight: be- 
sides one hundred and fifty-five from his own ship, his num- 
ber being six hundred and two; and from the whole four, 
after the landing of their cargoes, there died two hundred and 
twenty. He fell in with another vessel, which lost three 
hundred and sixty-two: the number she had brought was not 
specified. To these actual deaths, during and immediately 
after the voyage, and the subsequent loss in what is called 
the seasoning, I consider that this loss would be greater than 
V ordinary in cargoes landed in so sickly a state. Why, sir, 
were such a mortality general, it would, in a few months, de- 
populate the earth. We asked the surgeon the causes of these 
excessive losses, particularly on board his own ship, where he 
had it in his power to ascertain them. The substance of his 
reply was, that most of the slaves appeared to labour under a 
fixed dejection and melancholy, interrupted now and then 
by lamentations and plaintive songs, expressive of their con- 
cern for the loss of their relations and friends and native 
country. So powerfully did this operate, that oiany attempted 
various ways of destroying themselves; some endeavoured to 
drown themselves, and three actually effected it; others obsti- 
nately refused to take sustenance, and when the whip and 
other violent means were used to compel them to eat, they 
looked up in the face of the officer, who unwillingly executed 
this painful task, and said, in their own language, ' Presently 
we shall be no more.' Their state of mind produced a ge- 
neral state of languor and debility, which were increased, in 
many instances, by an unconquerable abstinence from food. 
arising partly from sickness, partly, to use the language of 



SLAVE TRADE. 339 

alave captains, from ' sulkiness.' These causes naturally sect ix. 
produced the dysentery; the contagion spread, numbers were v.^'V'^^^ 
daily carried off, and the disorder, aided by so many powerful 
auxiliaries, resisted all the force of medicine. 

" The ship in which Mr. Claxton, the surgeon, sailed, since 
the regulating act, afforded a repetition of all the same horrid 
circumstances I have before alluded to. Suicide, various 
xvays, was attempted and effected, and the same barbarous 
expedients were resorted to, in order to compel them lo con- 
tinue an existence too painful to be endured: the mortality 
also was as great." 

10. Bryan Edwards, in his History of the West Indies,* 
computes the total import of negroes, in British vessels, into 
all the British colonies of America and the West Indies, trom 
1680 to 1786, at 2,130,000, being on an average of thpAvholc, 
20,095 annually. He acknowledges that this estimate " is 
much less than is commonly supposed," and that he had not 
"sufficient materials to enable him to furnish an accurate 
statement." There can be no doubt (hat he is far short of the 
seal number. It is calculated, as we have seen, by Ander- 
son, that the annual British export from Africa was owe hun- 
dred thousand, and the annual mortality twenty thousand. 
Mr. Long confesses, in his History of Jamaica, that twenty- 
seven thousand were imported into that island in two years and 
an half; and Mr. Edwards puts down the Jamaica importa- 
tion at one-third of the whole. The Dutch colonies of De- 
merara, Guiana, and Berbice fell into the hand^ of Great 
Britain in 1797: and immediately called for a great number 
of negroes, having been prevented from supplying themselves 
during the war. It is averred in the Edinburgh Review 
(No. 24) that the British slave trade then rose to fifty-seven 
thousand, and continued at that standard for eight years; that 
is, until 1805, when the importation into the Dutch colonies 
was terminated by an order in council, to appease the jealou- 
sies and clamours in the old islands. 

Taking the data which the statements quoted in the preced- 
ing pages afford, I should not certainly transcend the mark, if I 
added ten thousand to the average of Edwards. If we state it, 
in round numbers, at thirty thousand, we shall have, for the one 
hundred and six years, three millions one hundred and eighteen 
thousand negroes imported into the British possessions alone. 
But to have the whole number which Great Britain obtainer' 

* B. IV. C.2. 



340 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. from Africa, we inusl bring into the account those whom she 
v-^-v-^a^ procured antecedent to the year 1680, and afier the year 1786; 
those whom she imported directly into the foreign possessions, 
under her contracts, and otherwise; and also, those who perish- 
ed on her hands on tlie coast of Africa, and in the transportation. 
The aggregate of her immediate prey must have exceeded six 
millions, and we may rate the direct mortality for which she is 
answerable, at two millions, for the century of the trade pre- 
ceding the abolition.* If we call to mind, besides, the general 
physical suffering undergone by the survivors, before they 
reached their ultimate, most calamitous lot; the mental agony 
implied in their divulsion from their native soil and the bonds 
of kindred and friendship; we must stand aghast at the account 
of crime whieh remained open against the British nation at 
the time of the ai^olition. In addition to the items mentioned, 
those are of no small moment which are suggested in Mr. 
Pitt's apostrophe to the House of Commons. " Do you think 
nothing of the ruin and the miseries in which so many other 
individuals, still remaining in Africa, are involved, in conse- 
quence of carrying off so many myriads of people? Do you 
think nothing of their families which are left behind; of the 
connexions which are broken; of the friendships, attachments, 
and relationships that are burst asunder? Do you think nothing 
of the miseries, in consequence, that are felt from generation 
to generation, of the privation of that happiness which might 
be communicated to them by the introduction of civilization, 
and of mental and moral improvement.'"' 

From the foregoing exposition, it may be asserted, with 
confidence, that the British slave trade caused immediately, 
during the two centuries of its legal prosecution, the destruc- 
tion of more negroes than have existed, altogether, in North 
America, since the first settlement. The leaders of the abo- 
lition, the Pitts, the Foxes, the Horsleys, did not hesitate to 
Bestow upon that destruction the most fearful of epithets. 
*^' What is it," exclaimed Lord Grenville, " but murder to 



* This is mucii below the calculations of her own writers. " The 
luimber," says one of these, " of slaves which the ships profess to 
take is not an exact criterion of the number actually taken. The pub- 
lic number does not include the quota, allowed to the respective 
officers of the ship ; nor do the owners confine themselves to any exact 
number, if, on tlie arrival of the ship in Africa, the commodity is 
cheaper than they expected." For obvious reasons, the moTtality of 
the negroes in the transportation would not be disclosed in all its ex- 
tent. The number smuggled by tlie British into the Spanish posses- 
sions, while they enjoyed the assiento. was not inconsiderable. 



SLAVE TRADE. 34.1 

pursue a practice which produced annually unlimely death to SECT. IX. 
thousands of innocent and helpless beings!" Now, I would v-«<>^^'*i-' 
ask, which it is, the Briton or the American, that can, with 
most propriety, be stigmatized, nationally, as " a murderer 
of slaves?" 

If we admitted as true all that the British writers have re- 
lated of the condition and treatment of the slaves in this 
country, we could yet defy them to make out an amount of 
injustice, and suffering, and cruelty, in any way equal to that 
which they have charged and proved upon their African trade. 
In portentpus individual instances of inhuman conduct, whe- 
ther as to enormity or multitude, that trade far outstrips the 
North American negro slavery; the history of which presents, 
indeed, no authenticated case of barbarity which does not ap- 
pear almost venial, in the comparison with the monstrous pro- 
ceedings consigned in the parliamentary minutes of evidence. 

11. The thirst of gain and the ambition of commercial su- 
premacy, which engaged and animated the British people and 
government in this detestable traffic, inspired them with the 
aim of monopolizing every market for human flesh. The 
cargo of negroes was carried with equal readiness to Caraccas 
or to Jamaica, to Pennsylvania or to Guiana. No discrimi- 
nation was made as to the character of the masters to whose 
absolute will they were to be consigned, or to the nature of 
the climate or the toil, which they were to undergo. The 
French and the Spaniards had, like ourselves, their full share 
of obloquy from the English traveller, on account of the seve- 
rity of their rule over the very slaves whom the English trader 
had sold to them; and the French and Spanish character 
stood degraded, on the same account, in elaborate contrasts 
with the British, when the French and Spanish ports were 
crowded with British slave ships, and the British ministers 
struggling for the prolongation of the Assiento-contract. 

Doubtless, Great Britain was answerable for the fate of the 
whole number of beings whom she delivered over to perpe- 
tual bondage in this hemisphere; knowing the temper and 
habits of the Spanish and French planters, she partook in the 
guilt of their excesses of cruelty towards the slaves whom 
they had received from her ships. In the case of the slavery 
in her own islands she was more than an accessary; and it 
could not be surpassed in hardship and inhumanity. That 
in the Spanish and French, or even the Dutch possessions, 
was not worse; and in the American provinces universally 
acknowledged to be much more mild. While every where in 



343 NEGRO SLAVERY AN1> 

PART I. the latter, there was an excess of births over deaths among 
^w'^^'^N-' the negroes, and in some, a rapidity of increase; in the Bri- 
tish West Indies, the whole stock required renewal in less 
than fifteen years.* 

I had intended to copy from the parliamentary statements 
some of the facts illustrative of this additional waste of the 
human species, and of the condition and treatment of the ne- 
groes, under British dominion; but I have already dealt in 
details of this nature, as much as is compatible with my 
limits, and the tenderness due to the feelings of my readers. 
It is enough to refer to the debates in the British parliament 
on the abolition, and on the slave registry bills. The tone of 
the British wriiers has often been such on these subjects, as 
/ if they considered the conscience of England clear with re- 
spect to the slave trade and to slavery, because these were 
unknown in l^er own immediate territory. This miserable 
casuistry was noticed in Parliament in the year 1792, in the 
following pointed and just remarks. 

" Mr. Robert Thornton said, — the people of England were 
called a humane set of people. Liberty was the boast of our 
island; and it was said, that no African was landed on our 
■soil, who did not instantly become free. They were guilty, 
however, of a contradiction, as long as they sent those miser- 
able wretches elsewhere into slavery; they were governed by 
.a selfish principle; they could send these wretches out of 
their sight to be vilified, and disgraced, and scourged, but 
they did not themselves, like to witnesfftheir cries, their tears, 
and all their degradation. He recollected an old motto, 
' Qui facit per alium, facit per se.' " 

Neither the Parliament nor nation could, at any time, plead 
ignorance of the character of the trade, and of West India 
slavery. The collections of early voyages; the reports of tra- 



* "According to Sir Isaac Newton," says Dr. Dickson, "mankind die 
off, and are renewed every tliirty-three or thirty-four years. But the 
slaves collectively, bought and bred, die ofF, and are renewed, in about 
fifteen years; and therefore more than twice as fast as the rest of the 
species; and the bovght alone more than /oz/r or five times as fast." 
When the whole number of slaves in the British West India Islands 
was computed at 265,666, the annual consumption of them was esti- 
mated at 23,743. Mr. Malthus remarks in the Appendix to his Essay 
on I'opuhition, that if the slaves in the West Indies had been only in 
a tolerable condition ; if their civil condition and moral habits had been 
made only to approach to those which prevail among the mass of the 
liuman race in the worst governed countries in the world, it is contrary 
to the general laws of nature tosuppose, that they would not have been 
able by procreation fully to supply the effective demand for labour. 



SLAVE TRAUE. 343 

vellers; the mutual, printed accusations of the Royal Afiicau sect ix. 
Company, and the private adventurers; the inevitable noto- v^^'vv^ 
riety of facts where considerable cities were almost entirely 
devoted to the traffic; the constant intercourse with the West 
Indies, through all ranks of life; the solemn admonitions of 
the writers whom Clarkson has cited; the insurance cases 
which were brought into the courts of jusiice; — preclude the 
charitable supposilion that mercy, and justice, and honour 
were unconsciously lranii)icd upon in the race of commercial 
competition. Mr. Wilberforce, after displaying, in his speech 
of 1792, the enormities of which I have mentioned a bmall 
partj added, " nor do we learn these transactions only from 
our own witnesses; they are proved by the testimony of slave- 
factors themselves, whose works were written and published 
long before the present enquiry." 

I have observed that, until the year 1786, no society was 
formed among any description of persons in England, which 
had for its object the abolition of the trade. The callousness 
of the government too is almost inconceivable. Clarkson 
relates that Granville Sharp communicated all the facts of the 
hideous case of captain Zong, with a copy of the trial to the 
Lords of the Admiralty, as the guardians of justice upon the 
seas, and to the duke of Portland, as principal minister of 
state; but that no notice was taken by any of them, of the 
information thus imparted. When the Quakers presented, in 
1783, their petition to Parliament against the slave trade,— *- 
the first of that purport ever presented, — Lord North ad- 
mitted, in the House of Commons, the grievousness of the 
evil, and Only " regretted that the trade against which the 
petition was so justly directed, was, in a commercial view 
become necessary to almost every nation in Europe." In 
1776, the estimable David Hartley, after exposing to the 
House of Commons, the abominations of the slave trade, and 
laying on the table of the House some of the fetters and other 
instruments of torture employed on board of the slave ships, 
made a motion '^ that the slave trade was contrary to the laws 
of God and the rights of man." Tliis motion was seconded 
by the patriot and philanthropist, Sir George Saville, who 
lives so brilliantly in the splendid eulogy of Burke; and yet 
it failed utterly. The proceedings of the Commons the year 
following (1777) on the state of the African Compaiiy, are 
remarkable on account of the tone which prevailed in the dis- 
cussion. It was such, as if the trade were not only uuimpeach- 
ed, but unimpeachable. Nothing betrayed the business to be 
considered in any other light than as an ordinary one, except. 



344 JNKGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. peril rijDS, the following remarks of Mr. Temple Luttrell, who 
^■^'"^'^'^■^ had the charge of iinfoltling the case of the Company and the 
interests of the trade. " Some gentlemen may, indeed, ob- 
ject to the slave trade as inhuman and impious, but, hard as 
the case of a negro slave may appear to a free born Briton at 
first view, I conceive him to be far less an object of commi- 
seration, (his native state and local birthright being taken into 
the comparison,) than a poor impressed sailor within this 
island," &c. Another extract from the speech of Mr. Lut- 
trell, which passed without animadversion, will show the pre- 
vailing temper and policy on the subject; — how coolly and 
nicely the comparative value of human flesh was calculated in 
an assembly of '' free born Britons." 

" In the slave trade also, there might be prodigious im- 
provements; but the attention of the Board of Trade and 
plantations in this matter has been too much limited; the ne- 
groes from the gold coast suit our West India islands remark- 
ably well; they are laborious, bold, hardy, and live upon little 
besides salt hsh and rools^ which they meet with in Jamaica. 
The negroes from Congo, Angola, and the lower Guinea, are 
of a more soft, voluptuous, and effeminate nature, and their 
women chiefly till the ground; so that upon being transplant- 
ed to the hardships of our sugar colonies, they commit suicide 
rather than endure them; hence it is that one Gold Coast negro 
is worth, for sugar plantations, two of the others; but in JVorih 
Jimenca^ where they meet ivith food and entertainment^ and 
usage better adapted to their habits, they do perfectly welV 

12. At length, in 1787, through the indefatigable exertions 
of a few humane individuals in the middle ranks of life, the 
enormities of the slave system, in all its stages, were forced 
upon the attention of the government and nation. A member 
of parliament of great personal consideration, look up the 
subject of abolition with the zeal of an apostle, and the reso- 
lution of a martyr. He announced his intention to summon 
the government to the performance of its duty; and at oTice a 
' din of protestation and fierce defiance arose from every quar- 
ter. The slave trade, says Clarkson, appeared, like the fabu- 
lous hydra, to have a hundred heads; the merchant, the plan- 
ter, the morigagee, the manufacturer, the politician, the legis- 
lator, the cabinet minister, lifted up their voices against its 
annihilation." The humanity and patriotism of Mr. Pitt, Mr. 
Fox, and of some other distinguished orators of parliament, 
were, however, enlisted with Wilberforce; and no inconsider- 
able number of auxiliaries had been gained throughout tht 



SLAVE TRADE. 



3i5 



country, by the diffusion of the tracts of Benezet, Sharp, and SECT.ix. 
Clarkson; of pathetic songs, and moving pictures, and what- ^-*'^'"''*-^ 
ever could vivify public feeling and excite national shame. 
Among the higher classes, little real progress would seem to 
liave been made; since, according to Clarkson, most of the 
persons of rank and fortune in the west end of the metropolis, 
were converts to a pamphlet from the pen of a Liverpool 
champion, entitled, *•' Scriptural Researches on the Licitness 
of the Slave Trade," in which the Iwliness of the trade was 
stoutly maintained. 

In 178b, when a sufficiently marked excitement had been 
produced in the country, and the imposing shape of evidence 
before the privy council given to facts, a bill was brought into 
the Flouse of Commons for the mere regulation of the trade, 
so as to diminish the miseries of the middle passage. At this 
day, it is scarcely credible what resistance was made, both in 
doors and out, to this bill, which common humanity seemed 
to exact; what dilution it underwent in its progress; and how 
narrowly it escaped extinction, notwithstanding the earnest 
support of the minister, and a phalanx of the ablest rhetori- 
cians who have ever existed. It was bandied several times 
in new forms, between the two houses, and at length passed 
the Lords, through an ordeal, says Clarkson, as it were of 
fire. He adds, that it was "the first bill which ever put fetters 
upon the destructive monster — the slave trade;" but the fact 
soon transpired, that it missed its aim, and was interpreted by 
the slave merchants into an additional charter, or recognition 
of their pursuit as a lawful branch of commerce. 

In 1789, Mr. Wilberforce ventured to lay upon the table 
of the House of Commons, as subjects for future discussion, 
twelve historical propositions founded upon the evidence in 
the case of the slave trade, reported by the privy council. 
Matters were not ripe for the proposal of abolition to parlia- 
ment, until 1791, when Mr. VVilberforce made his first grand 
motion to that effect. After a vehement and protracted debate, 
in which the leaders of the cause exerted their utmost ability, 
it was lost by a considerable majority. For the opinion to be 
entertained of this result, I need only refer to the language of 
Mr. Fox and the Edinburgh Review. Mr. Fox said, in the de- 
bate, that " the trade was defensible upon no other ground than 
that of a highwayman; and that if the house, knowing as they 
did by the evidence, what it was, did not by their vole mark to 
all mankind their abhorrence of a practice so savage, so enor- 
mous, so repugnant to all laws human and divine, they would 
consign their character to eternal infamy." The Edinburgh 

Vol. I.~Xx 



346 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 



PART I. Review has told us, that " the question of the slave trade was 
^^^"^^^"^"^ always one in which interest, or an apprehension of interest, 
stood more daringly and nakedly opposed to humanity and 
justice, than any other on record." Certainly, never was a 
question of such awful import, so treated as this was, by the 
numerous advocates of the slave trade in Parliament. On 
the occasion just mentioned, Mr. Grosvenor said, " that gentle- 
men had exhibited a greai deal of eloquence in exhibiting in 
horrid colours, the tr-iffic in slaves. He acknowledged it was 
■ not an amiable trade; but neither tvas the trade of a butcher 
an amiable trade; and yet a mutton chop was, neverlheless, a 
good i/iiK^."* / 

Another and equally strenuous effort was made, the ensu- 
ing year, in the House of Commons, by the abolitionists. 
The house rejected the proposition of Mr. Wiiberforce, but 
manifested a disposition to vote a gradual abolition. So much, 
after the admissions extorted by the testimony, from (he leaders 
of the majority, and with the prospect of an effervescence 
of public sentiment from the cogent argiiments and elo- 
quent pictures of the speakers in the affirmative, could not, 
in decency or policy, be refused. Mr. Pitt, who, on this oc- 
casion, put forth all the energies and beauties of his unrivalled 
oratory, afterwards expressed himself in his place, in these 
terms: '"I feel the infamy of the trade so heavily, and see the 
impolicy of it so clearly, that I am ashamed I have not been 
able to convince the house to abandon it altogether at an in- 
stant — to pronounce with one voice the immediate and total 
abolition. There is no excuse for us, seeing this infernal 
traffic as we do. It is the very death of justice to utter a 
syllable in support of it." 

Mr. Dundas, one of the antagonists of imniediate abolition, 
in a short time, brought in a bill for a gradual one, with some 
singular additions. He proposed that, for the future, none 
but young persons should be allowed to be taken from Africa, 
and that a bounty should be given upon the importation of 
young negresses into the West Indies. On this latter point, 
Mr. Fox, in his overwhelming answer to Mr. Dundas, bore 
with particular severity. " A right honourable gentleman 
proposes a bounty on the importation of females, or, in other 

* In the final debate in the House of Lords, in 1807, Earl St. Vin- 
cent said, "He was surprised at the proposition of abolition before the 
house, and considering the high character and intelligence of the no- 
ble proposer, Lord Grenvilie, he declared he could account in no otlier 
tvay for his having brought it forward, but by supposing that sotti© 
•bitnan had cast his speU upon him !" (./2 laugh.) 



SLAVE TRADE. 347 

words, he proposes to make up the deficiency in the proper- SECT.ix. 
tion of sexes, by offering a premium to any crew of unprin- ^-''~'^'''~*>«-«' 
cipled and savage ruffians, who will attack and carry off any 
of the females of Africa! a bounty from the parliament of 
Great Britain, that shall make the fortune of any man, or set 
of men, who sliall kidnap or steal any unfortunate females 
from that continent! who shall bring them over as slaves, in 
order that they may be used for breeding slaves!" In the 
course of the debate, Mr. Diindas declared that these United 
States would, if Great Britain abandoned the slave trade, . ^ 

purvey for the West Indies; and he added — " Is it to be ima- 
gined that the Americans are so favourably disposed towards 
this country, as to resist the temptation of forming so valuable 
a connexion with our colonies? A connexion once begun by 
supplying them with negroes would not end there; and we 
might lose the West Indies without accomplishing our object.''^ 

Mr. Fox replied, that he loas not so much alarmed by the 
possibility of the British Islands getting into habits of intimacy 
with foreigners. Though the apprehension of Mr. Dundas 
concerning our assumption of the British slave trade has, no 
doubt, vanished from the minds of his successors in office, we 
may suspect, that the alarm at the possible consequences of an 
intimacy between these vStates and the West Indies, is one of the 
motives of the present rigorous system of commercial exclusion. 

The Commons voted a gradual abolition, and the Lords 
refused to concur. The next year, 1793, (he former refused 
to renew their vote, and rejected a motion of Mr. Wilberforce, 
to abolish that part of the British trade, by which the British 
merchants supplied foreigners with slaves. This motion, how- 
ever, being revived in 1794, was finally carried in a very 
thin house; but lost with the Peers by a majority of forty-five 
to four. I need not recite the annual and fruitless attempts of 
the abolitionists between this period and the year 1807, when 
they 'finally succeeded. The degree of merit for the interval, 
to which the Parliament and nation are entitled, may be col- 
lected from the following passage of the Edinburgh Review.* 

" The vast and general sensation produced by the first de- 
velopment of the horrible traffic in human flesh, speedily 
gave place to a much more sober and partial sentiment of re- 
probation; no small difficulty was experienced in attracting 
the attention of the public to the discussion for many years; 
it ivas pretty uniformly debated among empty benches, in those 
august assemblies, whose walls can scarce contain their crowds, 

* No. 47. 



348 jnegro slavery and 

PART I. when a person of honour is to be aitacked, or a female of easy 
**^'"^'"^-^ virtue is to give evidence.'''' 

The degree of success obtained at any time with the pub- 
lic, and the final triumph of tiie question, were owing in no 
small measure to considerations of expediency. It was found 
important to give quite as extensive a circulation to Clarkson's 
Essay on the Impolicy of the Slave Trade, as to the pam- 
phlets on its criminality, and the abstracts of the evidence re- 
specting its unparalleled barbarities. In Parliament, the 
abolitionists laboured mainly to prove, that instead of being 
advantageous to Great Britain, it was most destructive to her 
i,nterests; was the ruin of her seamen; prevented the extension 
of her manufactures; was no longer necessary for the mainte- 
nance of the due number of labourers in the West Indies; 
that a much more lucrative intercourse with Africa might be 
substituted for it; that the other powers of the world would 
either relinquish it, or be unable to carry it on, so that all 
ivoidd remain upon a footing^ &c. Mr. Wilberforce, in his 
firsv speech, admitting, for argument's sake, that " the rivals 
of Britain, the French" might take it up, asked " Would they 
not then be obliged to come to us, in consequence of the 
cheapness of our manufactures, for what they wanted for the 
African market.-^" We find the Edinburgh Reviewers rebuking 
the great abolitionist, in their 47th number, for talking, in 
his printed letter to M. Talleyrand, of the great sacrifice 
which England had made in the abolition, after he and all 
his coadjutors had uniformly, and so efficaciously, pleaded the 
mischievousness of the traffic to her, wiiether as a nursery for 
seamen, or a channel for the employment of capital. 

In the final debate of 1807; on"^ the abolition, Mr. Whit- 
bread, one of its most zealous advocates, said " It was com- 
plained that too much feeling and too much passion had been 
carried into this discussion. He complained on the contrary, 
that it had been made too little a question of feeling, and that 
it had been made almost entirely a matter of cold calculations 
of profit and loss between English money and African blood." 
Lord Castlereagh, indeed, did, in his first interview with the 
emperor of Russia, on the subject, of general abolition, expa- 
tiate upon what the British parliament had done in spite of the 
suggestions of national interest;'^- but, in the general confer- 
ences on the same subject, at Vienna, "•Lord Castlereagh," says 
the protocol of the sitting of 20th January, 1815, " communi- 

* See Letter of Lord Castlereagh to Earl Bathvirst, dated Vienna, 
January 2d, 1815, amon.s^ tlie papers laid before Parliament, April. 
1815. 



SLAVE TRADE. 



349 



oated authentic documents to prove that in the affair in ques- sect.ix. 
tion, the interest of the powers ot" Europe went hand in hand ^^'^'"'^"^ 
wiih their duty; ihat the abolition was particularly for the 
real advantage, and even indispensable for the security, of the 
colonial countries," &c.* 

On all hands, there must be an immediate concurrence in 
the general allegation of the Edinburgh ReviC'W, that " for the 
long spacfe of twenty years, Mr. Pitt could persuade about 
three-fourths of the members of Parliament to adopt any 
scheme of finance, or of external policy which he chose to 
countenance, but did never once prevail against the slave tra- 
ders and consignees of sugar in Bristol and Liverpool."! 
The Reviewers have made this failure, considered in con- 
nexion with the prompt success of the Fox administration, the 
ground of a most atrocious charge against the memory of Mr. 
Pitt — that he was not sincere in the cause of abolition, as a 
minister, although he might have been as a man. The dis- 
tinction would not save him, if this were true, from being re- 
garded as the vilest of hypocrites, nor the genius of the Bri- 
tish government from appearing as the most entirely artificial 
and selfish ever known. The strain of Mr. Pitt's speeches 
absolves him, however; and Clarkson has borne the strongest 
testimony to his good faith. His colleagues in the ministry, 
particularly the lord chancellor, Thurlow, exerted themselves 
indefatigably, in opposition to the measure, and weakened the 
impression of his station. The stigma does not attach to 
him, but to the Parliament, if he could make a majority in 
such a case; if he could bring them to act properly on a 
question the most important for humanity, and the reputation 
of the British name, only by using his influence as minister; 
that is, as the head of a party, and the dispenser of place and 
patronage. There is another question which neither Mr. 
Pitt nor Mr. Fox could have carried through both houses of 
Parliament, even as ministers — that of catholic emancipation; 
and the reader will remark that it is alone on two points of this 
description, in which the freedom of millions was involved, 
ministerial influence has been found ineffectual in the British • 
legislature. 

In the course of the present parliamentary session, (1819,) 
Mr. William Smith of Norwich — to whom the cause of abo- 
- lition is as much indebted as to any other parliameniary ad- 
vocate, except Mr. Wilberforce — stated to the House of Com- 
mons, that even at last in 1807, after the twenty years discus- 

*■ Pieces Officiellesde Schcell. vol. vli. f No. 24. 



350 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. sion, it required all the efforts of almost every member of (hat 
^'^^"^^''^^ house, who had any title to the character of an orator or a 
statesman, to carry the act through the Parliament. In fact, 
in the final debates, the justice and humanity of the trade were 
maintained as boldly as they ever had been; arguments of 
counsel were heard at the bar, and petitions received, against 
the abolition; Lord Castlereagh, Lord Sidmouth, Lord 
Havvkesbury, Lord Eldon, Lord Westmoreland, Mr. Rose, 
Mr. Bathurst, sjjoke in opposition. These were the men who, 
immediately after the abolition became a law, 'ook the place 
of its patrons in the governinent. Clarkson remarks, that 
though the bill had now passed both houses, " thtrre was an 
awful fear lest it should not receive the royal ashrni, before 
the Grenvilie ministry was dissolved." This awful (ear was 
founded uj)on the conviction that, with a ministiy adverse to 
the measure, no parliament could be found to adopt it at (he 
instigation of a member out of office. There is nothing, 
. therefore, forced, or illiberal, in the conclusion, that it was 
a general party movement; an act of subserviency in the 
old routine to the will of an administraiion firmly united and 
inextricably entangled in the object; thai, had that ministry 
been dissolved before the royal assent was given, (he slave 
traffic would be at this day a lawful branch of British com- 
merce.* As the case was, seventeen years had elapsed since 
superabundant, irrefragable evidaice of the history and cha- 
racter of the traffic was officially before Parliament: within 
that interval it had been allowed to Hourish on an enlarged 
scale. Sir Samuel Romilly told the House of Commons, in 
1806, that "since (he year 1796, no less than three hundred 
and sixty thousand Africans had been torn away, under the 
continued sanction of Parliament, from their native land." 
This estimate is certainly too low, for the annual exportation 
of the British, according to the Edinburgh Review, rose to 
57,000, after the acqtjisition of (he Dutch colonies in 1797. 
The Report of (h^ African InstKution for the present year 

* The following extract from the debate of the House of Commons 
of June Srtli, 1814, will shew that I am not alone in this conjecture. 
" Mr. Philips said — 

" I cannot forget that the public voice had been raised even more 
loudly against the slave trade before the administration of Mr. Fox, 
than during its brief existence; and to such a degree do I think the 
gratitude of the friends of justice and humanity due to that short-lived, 
and muc!i misrepresented administraiion, that I do in 7ny cojiscience be- 
lieve, but for them, the British slave trade ruouhl at this ir.omeiit hare been 
coniimiedto the disgrace of tlie country, to the outrage of public feelivg; and 
in 'violation of every principle of police, justice, and humanity." 



SLAVE TRADii. 351 

(1819) states tlie average at 55,000, and admits that the num- SECT. IX. 
ber taken from Africa in 1806 and 1807, in the prospect, o/" ^^-^-^r-^-/ 
the approaching abolition of the trade, was very considerable. 
From the period when Mr. Pitt declared to Parliament that 
they had examined sufficiently into the nature of the trade to 
enable them to decide, and must be now convinced of its 
cruelty and injustice, until the date of the cessation of im- 
portation into the British colonies, the number of negroes car- 
ried into slavery by the British merchants with the authority 
of the nation, could not have been less than one-tliird of the 
whole number now existing in the United States. 

13. My readers may already understand, that the British 
abolition is not quite so abundantly creditable, as to render it 
an adequate foundation for invidious reflections on the United 
States. But I will suppose that the motives were altogether pure 
and magnanimous; that it was the immediate fruit of Chris- 
tian conviction; — a national act of contrition and atonement. 
The questions then arise, — was it in itself a sutficient repara- 
tion for the wrongs done to Africa.-' and if not, has Great 
Britain performed her utmost to make full amends? The ad- 
vocates of the abolition admitted universally, what all must 
perceive, that by it she had merely slopped the increase of 
her vast debt to that continent and to humanity; that she was 
bound to go further; to rectify the condition of the negroes 
within her dominions, and, if possible, to withdraw all the 
other nations from the slave trade. Every one saw that unless 
her example were imitated by the slave-dealing powers of 
Europe, her proceeding, however useful to her own commerce 
and character, would be productive, comparatively, of little 
advantage to Africa, and followed by an extensive clandestine 
trade in her own dependencies. 

Reviewing the statements of those who brought about the 
abolition, respecting the immensity of the crime she had com- 
mitted, and the misery and mischief she had caused; and on the 
other hand, the estimates made by the anti-abolitionists, of the 
vast emolument and general advantages which she had gained, 
in the prosecution of the trade, closet- moralists thought it in- 
cumbent upon ber, to interpose her whole strength in favour of 
the region she had so long desolated, and of the portion of its 
offspring within the limits of her empire, in any way that might 
be found necessary to give efficacy to her intervention, and at 
any risk. For the sake of an addition to her revenue, she had 
hazarded and incurred the loss of thirteen flourishing colonies; 
for the acquisition of slips of territory in America, and of sugar 



353 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 



PART I. islands filled with black slaves, — for points of honour and maii- 
-^"^-^■'^•^ time prerogative; for security from possible dangers, — she had 
waged long and destructive wars. She might, then, to make 
her atonement for the enormity and havoc of the slave trade, 
in some degree commensurate with her guilt — to prevent the 
continuance of a system subversive of the law of nations, and 
of \.hA'. principles of Christianity; superlatively baneful and im- 
moral, — she might, if no other means would suffice, unsheath 
her sword, and be assured in so doing of the favoarof the God 
of battles, and of all the friends of humanity and justice on 
earth. On such an occasion it became her, Avhen convinced 
of the futility of every other expedient, to exert her maritime 
superiority, regardless of all forms and obstacles — a course of 
proceeding not without precedent in her history. 

At the period of her abolition, France and Spain being at 
war with her, had long been cut off from the trade. The 
only power engaged in the prosecution of it, was Portugal, 
whose government depended upon her for its existence. 
Scarcely a year elapsed, when Spain returned to a state 
of amity with her, under such circumstances, as rendered 
it impossible she should be refused any boon she might be 
pleased to ask. But I will leave it to an English writer to 
explain the nature of the conjuncture, and to state the result. 
I find the following exposition in a remarkable work publish- 
ed the last year (1818) in London, and entitled, "A View of 
the present Increase of the Slave Trade, by Robert Thorpe, 
L. L. D. late Chief Justice of Sierra Leone, and Judge of the 
Vice Admii'alty Court in that Colony." 

"• At the moment England abolished the slave trade, all Eu- 
rope was most fewourably circumstanced to ensure an univer- 
sal abolition. The royal family of Spain threw themselves 
into the arms of France, and were handed to a prison. The 
royal family of Portugal sought the protection of England, and 
were safely conveyed to their Brasil dominions. We only 
wanted the co-operation of these powers to establish a perfect 
abolition; we upheld them as kingdoms; we had a right to 
insist on their abolishing the slave trade; every principle of 
justice and humanity called for such a demand, while the po- 
licy and professions of this nation should have made compli- 
ance necessary. Such a requisition could not have been con- 
sidered as interfering with the independence of those govern- 
ments, nor with the rights of their subjects. Independence is 
not comprised in a power to enslave, nor do the lawful rights of 
any people consist in their ability to invade the natural rights of 
man. While England was exhausting her blood and treasure 



SLAVE TRADE. S53 

m defence of the liberty of Spain and Portugal, she was not sect.ix. 
warrantable in diminishing the resources of her wealth, to ex- ^-^"^'''>-^ 
tend the cruelty of their commerce; but the most fortunate coin- 
cidence was criminally neglected."* 

Nothing can be more just than all this representation. Every 
one acquainted with the history of the era of Bonaparte's in- 
vasion of the Peninsula, must be convinced, that it was in tbe 
power of England, to extort from Portugal and Spain the 
abolition of their slave trade. " It would have been," said 
Mr. Canning, palliating the omission in the House of Com- 
mons, ^^ unwise to have taken a high tone with them in the day 
of their distress; a strong remonstrance on this subjec^vyould 
have gone with loo much of authority, and have appeared 
insulting."t So fastidious a delicacy, where the object was, 
according to the British theory, of immeasurable importance 
to the repose of the national conscience, and to humanity! 
The day of the absolute dependence of those powers upon 
England, was the only day, in which there was any likelihood 
of the accomplishment of that object with them; and a strong 
remonstrance against the prosecution of a system so exorbi- 
tantly wicked and pernicious, could not in itself have worn 
the air of insult, but would rather have appeared an act of 
noble friendship and resolute philanthropy. With the lives 
and happiness of millions of Africans, and all the other mo- 
mentous considerations attached to the extinguishment of the 
slave trade, at stake, the opportunity was to be improved de- 
terminately, thougFi at a greater cost than a little violence 
done to perverted feelings, and the excitement of an impotent 
discontent. If Spain and Portugal could be induced to com- 
ply at once, then, as no lawful trade in slaves would exist dur- 
ing the war, Great Britain ruling the seas and exercising the 
belligerent right of search, might repress all illicit trade, and 
take much more effectual precautions against its revival in 
any shape. In this point of view, the opportunity seemed 
doubly precious, and irretrievable. 

The coincidence was, to repeat the language of Dr. Thorpe, 
''criminally neglected." The British abolition took the cha- 
racter of a division of the British share of the trade between 
foreign powers, and a number of British subjects upon whom 
the act of Parliament would not serve as a restraint. The 
anti-abolitionis(s predicted this, and contributed to the fulfil- 
ment of the prediction. Portugal was left at liberty to supply 
not only her own dependencies, but those of Spain; and to the 

* Page 24. f Debate on the Treaty of 1814. 

Vol. I.— Y y 



354 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. latter, cargoes were incessantly carried under the Portuguese 
v.^^'"^ flag, until at length the British cruizers were authorized to 
bring in for adjudication, such Portuguese ships as might be 
found carrying slaves, to places not subject to the crown of 
Portugal. It was discovered, within the year after the ter- 
mination by law of the British exportation, that the trade 
itself had not suffered the least abatement; but, on the con- 
trary, was plied with greater activity, to a greater extent, and 
with aggravated barbarity, under the Spanish, Swedish, and 
Portuguese flags. "The slave trade," says the Report, dated 
1810, of the commissioners of African inquiry, " is at pre- 
sent carried on to a vast extent. By the autumn of 1809, 
the coast of Africa swarmed with contraband vessels; and it 
was not until the arrival of a small squadron of his majesty's 
vessels, early the next year (1810!) that any interruption 
could be given to their proceedings." In 1810, Great Britain 
concluded a treaty with Portugal, by which she secured to 
herself great commercial advantages, and consented that Por- 
tugal should carry on the trade in slaves from the African do- 
minions (claimed or in possession) of the Portuguese crown, 
precisely the great marts of the trade — Portugal announcing, 
at the same time, with what sincerity will soon be seen, her 
resolution to co-operate with his Britannic majesty in the 
cause of humanity and justice, &c. 

To display the efficacy of the British abolition for the first 
years, I will here make a few extracts from the Reports of the 
London African Institution — a society which boasts of the 
most illustrious names, and is the centre of information re- 
specting African affairs. 

"Circumstances," says the Report of 1809, "have come 
to the knowledge of the directors of this institution, which 
leave them no room to doubt that means are at this moment 
employed by persons formerly engaged in the slave trade, for 
eluding the salutary provisions of the abolition act, and per- 
petuating the guilt and misery of that traffic." 

" No foreign states," says the Report of 1810, "have hi- 
therto followed the example set them by the legislatures of 
Great Britain and the United States of America. The flags of 
vSpain and of Sweden have of late been extensively employed 
in covering and protecting a trade in slaves. Nor is this all. 
It has been discovered that, in defiance of all the penalties 
imposed by act of Parliament, vessels under foreign flags 
have been fitted out in the ports of Liverpool and London^ for 
the purpose of carrying slaves from the coast of Africa to the 
Spanish and Portuguese seltlen^cnts in Air.erica. Some car- 



SLAVE TRADE. 



36^ 



goes from that coast have been landed at St. Bartholomews, SECT. IX. 
and smuggled thence into English islands. The discovery of '•-^'v-'*^ 
one transaction has likewise discovered to the directors facts, 
which tend to implicate persons of some consideration in so- 
ciety in the guilt of these and similar practices." 

"On the coast of Africa," says the Report of 1811, "the 
same melancholy scene has been exhibited during the last 
year, which the directors had the pain of describing in their 
former report. The coast has swarmed with slave ships, 
chiefly under Portuguese and Spanish colours, &c. Suffice it 
to say, that accounts from various quarters concur with certain 
judicial proceedings which have taken place in this <;ountry, 
to prove, that a very considerable trade in slaves has been car- 
ried on of late, and a large portion of it by means of the capi- 
tal and credit of British subJecfs.***After the length to which 
the report has already run, the directors are unwilling to enter 
into minute details, with regard to the means which have been 
practised in the West Indies, to elude the laws prohibiting the 
importation of slaves. Suffice it to say, that they have re- 
ceived information which satisfies them that those laws have 
been grossly, and in some instances openly, violated, by the 
importation of slaves, to a considerable extent^ into our own 
West India colonies." 

" There is a large class of contraband slave ships fitted out 
chiefly from London or Liverpool, destined in fact to the coast 
of Africa," &c. 

"The representations," says the Report of 1812, "which 
the directors made in their last report, of the extent to which 
the slave trade had revived on the coast of Africa, appear to 
have fallen short of the truth. The result of the intelligence 
which they have since received is, that, during the year 1810, 
no less than from 70 to 80,000 Africans were transported as 
slaves from the western coast of Africa to the opposite shores 
of the Atlantic. The greatest proportion is either a British 
or an American trade, conducted under the flags of Spain and 
Portugal. 

"What," says the Report of 1813, "has been represented 
as a bona fide Spanish or Portuguese slave trade, has turned 
out, upon strict examination, to be, in many instances, a trade 
in slaves, illegally carried on by British capital and British 
subjects^ and in some instances by American subjtcts." 

" The directors have to bring before the general meeting a 
new species of slave trade, carried on, it should seem, between 
Egypt and the island of Malta. They have received informa- 
tion on which they are disposed to rely, stating that several 



356 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 



PART I. slaves have been brought from Alexandria to tliat island, and 
^'■^'"^'^^*^ there sold to Englishmen^ as well as to Maltese inhabitants. 
These poor creatures consist principally of negro children, 
brought from countries bordering on the upper Nile," &c. 

"•It is with extreme regret that the directors are again 
obliged to state the want of success which has attended their 
repeated, earnest, and urgent representations to government 
respecting the slave trade, carried on by means of the Por- 
tuguese island of Bissao," &c. 

" The condition of the slaves, in the new British conquests, 
the Isles of France and Bourboh, is wretched in the extreme. 
It is with feelings of deep regret that the directors, in pro- 
ceeding to advert to the condition of slaves in the West In- 
dies, express their belief that most flagrant abuses continue tc 
exist in the administration of the law, as far as regards those 
unhappy beings, if, indeed, they can be said to be under the 
protection of any law." 

"The directors cannot close their observations on the state 
of Africa, without adverting to the exportation of arms and 
gunpowder to that continent. It is well known that before the 
passing of the act for the abolition of the slave trade, these 
were exported thither in very large quantities. Letters re- 
ceived from persons in Africa, whose veracity is unquestion- 
able, assert the fact, that the slave traders are supplied with 
these necessary implements of their traffic, solely from thii; 
country, and that, indeed, they were to be obtained no where 
else." 

" A very considerable slave trade," says the Report of 1814, 
"is still carried on to the islands of France and Bourbon." 

" There is too much reason to believe that a considerable 
' traffic of slaves still exists on the north coast of Jlfrica.^'' 

" The board have still to lament the continuance of flagrant 
abuses in several of the West India islands," &c. 

14. On the triumph of the allied arms over the power of Bo- 
naparte, in the springof 1814, another crisis seemed to present 
itself, propitious to the object of universal abolition. Great 
Britain had the chief share of the glory and profit of that 
event; it was to her, in the language of all her subjects, that 
Europe owed its deliverance; she had rescued Portugal and 
Spain; restored Ferdinand to his throne, and reinstated 
the house of Bourbon in France. Hence, it would be im-= 
possible for the governments of those countries to resist her 
solicitations in favour of Africa; or, at all events, to brave 
her power, in case she manifested a determination to interpose 



SLAVE TRADE. 



357 



it as a shield between that continent and their ruthless cupi- sect.ix, 
dity. The African Institution, in the Report which I have v>''"v'^^*' 
last quoted, did not overlook the new turn of affairs. " The 
directors," said the Report, " have long been persuaded, that 
all that can be effected, in inducing particular states to re- 
nounce the traffic in slaves, however important in itself, will 
produce but a very partial benefit to Africa, unless, on the 
conclusion of a general peace, the renunciation should be- 
come general, and be adopted as a part of the standing policy 
of the great commonwealth of Europe. While the »var con- 
tinues, it is a matter of no moment whether the slave trade 
is abolished in France; but it is obvious, that, if a general 
peace should leave the merchants of that country at liberty to 
renew their former traffic in their fellow-creatures, little com- 
paratively will have been achieved for Africa by all the gene- 
rous efforts of this country. The present moment having 
appeared to the directors to be peculiarly favourable to the 
hope of obtaining a recognition of the great principles of the 
abolition, and even the entire and unqualified renunciation of 
this nefarious traffic by all the great powers of Europe, they 
have endeavoured to impress upon the minds of his majesty's 
ministers, the unspeakable importance of establishing a gene- 
ral convention among the European powers, for that purpose." 

To aid the British negotiators at Paris, the two houses of 
Parliament voted unanimously on the 2d of May, addresses to 
the Prince Regent, representing the importance of a general 
abolition, and their conviction, that unless it took place, the 
practical result of the restoration of peace would be " to open the 
sea to swarms of piratical adventurers who would renew and 
extend, on the shores of Africa, the scenes of carnage and ra- 
pine in a great measure suspended by maritime hostilities; to 
kindle a thousand ferocious wars," &c. In supporting the 
address of the House of Commons, Mr. Wilberforce truly re- 
marked, that " with regard to France, the war had practically 
abolished the trade, and therefore, if carried on by her, it 
would be creating it anew." 

On the 30th May, 1814, the treaty between Great Britain 
and France was signed at Paris; and lo! France was allowed 
a term of five years in which to pursue the traffic in human 
flesh, and his Britannic Majesty restored to his most Christian 
Majesty all the colonies, factories, and establishments, of what- 
ever kind, which France possessed the Isf of January, 1792, 
in the seas and upon the continents of America, Jijrka. and 
Asia, with the' exception of the islands of Tobago and St, 
Lucia, and of the Isle of France and its dependencies. This 



358 NEGRO SLAVERY AN6 

PART I. ^vas an electric shock for the abolitionists upon principle, and 
"^^"^^"^"^ the signal for a vigorous party assault upon the ministry. 

It seemed impossible to doubt that France would have 
yielded, had the immediate and total prohibition of the trade 
been made the sine quanon of the restitution of her colonies; 
or had she been tempted with the Mauritius. Her utter ina- 
bility lo renew the war, and the certainty that the allies would 
not have passed over to her side to enforce her pretensions lo 
the slave trade, were points on which even the most credu- 
lous could not be deceived. 

The African Institution passed resolutions of reprobation; 
petitions without number were got up throughout the country; 
motions made in Parliament; and the stir had on the whole 
an imposing character. The following is part of the repre- 
sentations of the African Institution on the occasion. "A 
provision is contained in the recent treaty of peace with 
France, the consequence of which must be the revival of the 
slave trade on a large scale, and to an indefinite extent. This 
revival is attended with circumstances of peculiar aggravation. 
Great and populous colonies, in which, during the last seven 
years, the importation of slaves has been strictly prohibited, 
have been freely ceded to France, not only without any stipu- 
lation for the continuance of that prohibition, but with the 
declared purpose on the part of that country, of commencing 
a new slave trade for their supply." 

The apprehensions of the Institution did not receive much 
relief on the appearance of the French slave trade ordinance. 
By a circular letter from the administration of the customs, 
dated 29th August, the merchants of France were apprized, 
that "the traffic was restored in all its privileges, and might 
be carried on from every port having a public bonding ware- 
house: — That all the goods, foreign as well as domestic, in- 
cluding arms and ammunition, required for this trade, might be 
shipped for the coast of Africa, duty free: That the same pro- 
vision extended to the ship's provisions, both for the crew and 
negroes: That the cargoes or provisions were not to be em- 
ployed, except in the purchase and conveyance of negroes; 
That French ships only could engage in the trade; and, that 
they might import into all the French colonies, of which the 
government should recover possession, as well as those ceded 
by the treaty." 

The language held in Parliament was no less emphatical 
than that of the African Institution. As a specimen, I will 
offer some extracts from the speech of Lord Grenville. 

"That the immediate and total abolition of the slave trade 



SLAVE TRADE. o59 

might, in this treaty, if pursued with zeal, have been with cer- SECT.IX, 
tainty obtained, is, unless I am greatly misinformed, the gene- ^-^^^-^.^'^^ 
ral sentiment of all who are conversant in foreign negotiation; 
the concurrent and decided judgment of enlightened statesmen 
in every country in Europe," 

" What credulity will acquiesce in the pretence, that to extort , 
from France the surrender of her conquest, was easy; to dis- 
suade her from the revival of the slave trade impracticable?" 

'' This treaty has secured to our country commercial profits, 
and colonial acquisitions, at the expense of France; inconside- 
rable in value, I admit it, but still suthcient to brand our na- 
tional character with the dishonour of interested guilt. To 
France the renewal of the slave trade is conceded; into her 
hands we deliver up the wretched inhabitants of Africa; and 
from her in return we receive back those advantages; the con- 
tract is reciprocal; the transactions simultaneous; included in 
the same treaty, never will they be separated in the opinion of 
mankind." 

"We have consented to revive and guarantee the slave trade, 
not because we feared war, but because we thirsted for more 
extended possessions. Such will be the just judgment, both of 
the present time, and of posterity; the opinion of impartial men 
in all ages. If, they will tell us, you could not otherwise refuse 
yourselves to a dishonourable contract for guilt, you might 
have proffered in exchange for it the abandonment of these ac- 
quisitions; an exchange which France most certainly would 
gladly have accepted." 

" You are fully sensible also, how difficult it will be to pre- 
vent the application of British capital to this wickedness when 
authorized by France. How large a portion of this trade will 
really be carried on in her name by your own subjects; how 
much of it will be diverted to the supply of your own colonies, 
under a pretended destination to those with which they are so 
closely intermixed in the West Indian seas." 

The subject was taken up officially in the Edinburgh Re-^ 
view, and treated with as little reserve. The Reviewers 
cried out against "-the vile mockery of an abolition in rever- 
sion, expectant upon a five years term of unstinted, nay en- 
couraged slave trade." "England," they added, "has no 
manner of difficulty in obtaining Malta, Tobago, St. Lucia, 
the Isle of France, (not to mention the Cape); in short, any 
thing which may serve her interests; she surrenders Guada- 
loii^e^ that her islands may be supplied by smuggling.'''' 

Lord Castlereagh defended the treaty, upon the grounds 
of "the strong objection" of the French rulers to immediate 
abolition, because they would appear to submit to English die- 



J60 NEGKO SLAVERr AND 

PARTI, tation! of the importance of ending the negotiation in mutual 
^-•'-^'-''•^ respect and confidence; of the danger of prolonging the war by 
in^JS'ing upon a concession which France felt to be dishonour- 
able to her character as a nation, &c. He was " ready to 
admit, ihal Guadaioupe and Martinique being permitted to be 
points of flppot, did, to a certain degree, increase the probabi- 
lity of an illicit trade being carried on from those islands with 
tht Briiish colonies. But if France had even consented to 
abolish the trade, the number of depots which would have 
otherwise existed, was sufficiently numerous for the illegal 
ins"Oiluclion ol" slaves into the islands belonging to Great Bri- 
tain From the Havanna and Porto Rico, the possessions of 
Spain, slaves mighi very easily find their way into the British 
colonies." His lordship remarked, too, a point of delicacy as 
to pressing the abolition: "However disposed he and the Bri- 
tish nation might be to make sacrifices for it, he could assure 
the house that such was not the impression in France, and 
that even among the better classes of people there, the British 
government did not get full credit for their motives of acting. 
The motives were not there thought to arise from benevolence, 
but from a loish to impose fetters on French colonies and injure 
their commerce.'''' 

This misgiving of the French was of no fresh date, and 
could not have been altogether unknown to Parliament. In 
1807, Lord Lauderdale, whom Mr. Fox sent to negotiate with 
Bonaj)arfe the preceding year, made the following statement 
in the House of Lords. " On my urging to the French minis- 
ters the abolition of the slave trade, I was answered, that it 
could not be expected that the French government, irritated 
as it had been by the negroes in St.« Domingo, would readily 
agree to the abolition of the trade. I answered that the abo- 
lition would have been the only efiectual means of preventing 
the horrors which had occurred in that island. Then the 
truth came out. I was told that England, with her colonies 
well stocked with negroes, and affording a larger produce, 
might abolish the trade without inconvenience; but that 
France, with colonies ill-stocked, and deficient in produce, 
could not abolish it without conceding to us the greatest ad- 
vantages, and sustaining a proportionate loss."* 

The transactions in England, and the fundamental policy 
in Ihe case, prompted the British ministry to renew their in- 
stances with the French government. An island, or if pre- 
ferable, a pecuniary indemnity to the French planters, was 
offered for the immediate abandonment of the trade, or the 

* Cobbett's Parliamentary Debates, vol. viii. 



SLAVE TRADE. 



361 



abridgment of the term stipulated by the treaty. It was pro- SECT. IX. 
posed to France to establish a system of license, so as to pre- ^«.^^v--^ 
veiit the importation into her colonies of more negroes than 
•would be necessary for the existing plantations, and to preclude 
the cultivation of new lands. Lord Wellington discovered 
that there was no disposition among the French statesmen to 
relinquish the trade at once; but, finally, after a negotiation, 
the particulars of which are not a little curious, means were 
found by England to persuade the French government to put 
restrictions upon it; particularly that of confining it to the south 
of Cape Formosa. 

The first attempts upon the Spanish government bear date 
in 1814; but Ferdinand was upon his throne, and Spain 
clear of the French. The Spanish monarch consented to 
forbid his subjects to carry slaves to foreign possessions; no- 
thing moie could then be obtained, in the way and upon the 
terms which suited the views of England. 

Lord Castlereagh made his main effort, within the limits 
prescribed, at the Congress of Vienna. He succepded, not- 
withstanding the opposition of the Spanish and Portuguese 
plenipotentiaries, in rendering the eight principal powers, par- 
ties to the settlement of the question. Four sittings were 
specially assigned to its discussion. The fruit of the first, 
the only fruit of the whole arrangement, was the celebrated 
declaration of the 8th of February, 1815, in which all the 
powers proclaimed their detestation of the character, and their 
desire to accomplish the abolition, of the slave trade; at the 
same time that they acknowledged the right of each to take 
its own time for the total relinquishment on its own part. 
Talleyrand would not consent to abridge the term granted to 
France; Spain would make no acceptable concession: Por- 
tugal professed her readiness to limit the duration of her trade 
to eight years, provided his Britannic majesty would on his 
side acquiesce in certain material changes in the commercial 
relations between her and Great Britain. Some of the general 
observations made by the Spanish and Portuguese plenipo- 
tentiaries, in reply to Lord Castlereagh, are worth repeating. 
The first, Count Labrador, said, " if the Spanish colonies of 
A icrica were, as to the supply of negroes, in the same state 
as the English colonies, his Catholic majesty would not hesi- 
tate a moment in decreeing an immediate abolition: But, 
the question having been before the British parliament from 
1788 to 1807, the English traders and planters had full time 
to make extraordinary purchases of slaves; and, in tact, they 
did so. This was proved by the case of Jamaica, which, 
Vol. L~Z z 



362 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 



PARTI, in 1787, had only two hundred and fifty tiiousaiui slave?; 

^'■^''^''^"^^ whereas, at the period of the abolition, in 1807, she possess- 
ed four hundred thousand. During the long war with Eng- 
land, Spain had been deprived of the faculty of procuring ne- 
groes for herself. Jamaica had ten blacks to one white: in 
the island of Cuba, the best provided with slaves of all the 
Spanish colonies, there were two hundred and seventy-four 
thousand whites, and only two hundred and twelve thousand 
slaves." 

The representative of Portugal alleged that " the position 
of Brasil was particularly delicate in this matter; it was an 
immense country, which was far from possessing the number 
of hands necessary for its cultivation; that a sudden stoppage 
in the importation of negroes would be of incalculable mis- 
chief, as well for Brasil as for the Portuguese establish- 
ments on the coast of Africa; that the treatment of the slaves 
in Brasil was notoriously mild; and that these considerations 
made the case of Portugal an exception; at all events she 
might be excused if she proceeded leisurely and cautiously in 
the affair, since, in the instance of England, so long an inter- 
val had occurred between the proposal and the adoption of 
the measure." 

The primary object of Lord Castlereagh was to secure from 
the intrusion of foreign slave vessels, that part of the African 
coast, which England had marked out for her general trade. In 
the interval between the first and second general conference. 
(21st and 22d of January, 1815,) he signed two conventions 
with the plenipotentiary of Portugal, by which Great Britain 
released the balance due upon an old English loan to Portugal, 
and allotted three hundred thousand pounds sterling as a fund 
of indemnity for the owners of the Portuguese slave ships which 
her cruizers had captured before the 1st of June, 1814, on the 
ground of their being engaged in the trade illegally: She agreed 
at the same time to the abrogation of the treaty of 1810: Por* 
, tugal, on her part, covenanted to prohibit her subjects from 
carrying on the slave trade, in any way, to the north of the 
equator^ it being understood that they were to pursue it unmo- 
lested to the south of the line, as long as it should be at all 
permitted by the Portuguese laws. 

In a secret and confidential letter of Lord Castlereagh to the 
duke of Wellington, at Paris, of August, 1814,* his lordship 
stated, that it was become necessary to consider how far cer- 
tain Powers might be brought to do their duty in the matter 

* See the Pieces Officielles dc SchoeU, vol. vli. p. 90. 



SLAVE TRADE. 36S 

of abolilion, by a sense of interest; or, in other words, how sect. ix. 
they might be deprived of the undue advantage which they v-^-v-^^^ 
enjoyed over the states who, by a feeling of moral obligation, 
renounced the trade. Nothing, he suggested, appeared more 
likely to work the effect, than a concert among those states to 
exclude from their dominions the colonial produce of the 
refractory powers. Duke Wellington was instructed to sound 
the prince of Benevento on the subject. The true motives of 
this plan did not, we may presume, escape the penetration of 
the latter. Lord Castlereagh proposed it anew at Vienna 
to the emperor of Russia, in his formal interview with that 
monarch, on the subject of the slave trade. The abolition 
states could not, he urged, do less than adopt it: Unless they 
gave a preference to such colonial products as were not raised 
by slaves newly introduced, they would be partakers in the 
scandal and crime accompanying the growth of such as were! 
The British negotiator was indiscreet enough to submit the 
project for adoption, at the conferences of the plenipotentia- 
ries; with the modification that the products of the colonies 
in which the trade was forbidden, should be alone receiv- 
ed, or those of the vast regions of the globe furnishing the 
same articles by the labour of their own native inhabitants, 
meaning, says Schoell,t the British possessions in the East 
Indies. The ministers of Spain and Portugal protested against 
this expedient of coercion, and threatened that their courts 
would exclude in turn the most valuable export of the countries 
by which it should be adopted. 

What England could not persuade the Bourbons to do in 
1814, Bonaparte did spontaneously on his return from the 
Island of Elba. He interdicted the French slave trade at 
once, from motives of personal interest which few were at a 
loss to detect. When Louis was replaced on his throne, no- 
thing remained for him but to submit, apparently, to the will 
of the British minister who escorted him into Paris, and who 
required him not at least to retract the only favour granted by 
the arch-tyrant to humanity. Accordingly, on the 30th of 
July, 1815, Talleyrand announced to Lord Castlereagh that 
the slave trade was thenceforward, forever, and universally, 
forbidden to all the subjects of his most Christian majesty. 
The tenor of the correspondence on the subject between the 
two viziers is among the curiosities of that day. 

In 1816, England resumed her negotiation with Spain, 



t Histoire abregee des Traites de Paix, vol. xi. 



361 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. and, finallv, availing herself of the necessities of the latter, 
^-^-/-w effected the treaty olf Madrid of the 23d Sept. 1817. By 
this treaty, Spain, for a sum of four hundred thousand pounds 
sterling, stipulated to renounce the slave trade at once to 
the north of the line, and to prohibit it entirely, in all her do- 
minions, from the 30th May, 1830. The sum of four hun- 
dred thousand pounds bore a small proportion, indeed, to the 
wealth which Britain had drawn from the traffic in human 
flesh; or to that which she expected to derive from the ac- 
complishment of her views on Africa.* But the new sacri- 
fice was emblazoned in Parliament, and the rescue of the 
northern part of that continent declared to be consummated. 

" We have now," said Lord Casllereagh, " arrived at the 
last stage of our difficulties, and the last stage of our exertions. 
One great portion of the world was rescued from the horrors 
of the traffic. The approval of the grant amounted to this, 
whether the slave trade should be abolished or not." 

Lord Castlereagh announced, on the same occasion, the 
conclusion of a treaty with the Portuguese ambassador in Lon- 
don, for the final suppression of the Portuguese slave trade; 
and the certainty of its ratification: But his lordship's assu- 
rance was premature. The court of Brasil could not be drawn 
into any further retrenchment, than was stipulated in the 
treaty of Vienna to which I have adverted. Sweden, who 
had never authorized the trade, readily consented to prohibit 
it, on receiving Guadaloupe in 1813, in deposit. The king 
of the Netherlands accepted of the condition of a total renun- 
ciation, attached to the restitution of the Dutch colonies in 
1814. 

15. Before I proceed to exhibit the actual, and what^ — it 
is to be feared from late British statements, which I shall 
produce, — may be considered as the final result of all these 
boasted triumphs for Africa, I wish to illustrate further the 
English sins of commission. We have seen that the 
African Institution acknowledges the participation of Bri- 



* In the debate in the House of Commons, (Feb. 9th, 1818,) Mr. 
Wilberforce said, " He could not but think that the grant to Spain 
•would be more than repaid to Great Britain in commercial advantages, 
by the opening of a great continent to British industry; an object 
which would be entirely defeated, if the slave traffic was to be carried 
on by the Spanish nation. Our commercial connexion with Africa will 
do much more than repay us for any pecuniary sacrifices of this kind. 
He himself would see Great Britain deriving the greatest advantages 
from its intercourse with Africa." Hmisard's Farh Deb. 



SLAVETRABE. iJ65 

tish subjects in the trade, to a great extent. The same SECT. ix. 
admission has been made repeatedly in Parliament, by the v-ik'v'^"-' 
highest authority. Before the establishment of the peace of 
1814, Mr. Whilbread stated in the House of Commons, that 
"there were, to his knowledge, persons in England base 
enough to wish for the return of peace, on account of the 
facilities it would afford for carrying on the slave traffic under 
another flag."* On the 18th April, 1815, Mr. Barham alleged 
in the same place, " that it was a well known fact that a large 
British capital was employed in British ships, in the slave 
trade." And on the 9ih of February, 1818, Lord Castle- 
reagh held this language to Parliament. " It would be a great 
error to believe that the reproach of carrying on the slave 
trade illegally, belonged only to other countries. In numberless 
instances, he was sorry to say, it had come to his knowledge, 
that British subjects were indirectly and largely engaged." 

With respect to the British West India islands, it is of 
notoriety that they have been replenished with negroes 
since the British abolition. In the quotations which I have 
made from the Reports of the African Institution, the con- 
traband trade of those islands is formally denounced. The 
Report of that Society for 1815, is more pointed and circum- 
stantial in its declarations on the same head, in relation to all 
of them. It gives us to understand that twenty thousand ne- 
groes had been yearly smuggled into them, and avers that 
" all of the settlements were confident of having the means of 
providing themselves still with slaves in the proportion ot their 
actual demand;" that ''insular laws, whose policy plainly de- 
pended on the permanence of the slave trade, remained unre- 
pealed;" that " the assemblies still looked to Africa for the 
supply of their wasting population." The Edinburgh Review, 
in expressing some incredulity with respect to the amount of 
the illicit importation, intimated in the Report, remarks, 
however, that "to question the fact of clandestine importation 
would prove extreme ignorance of West Indian morals, and of 
the state to which the administration of the law is of neces- 
sity reduced, where nine persons in ten of the inhabitants are 
incompetent witnesses, and are, moreover, the property of the 
remaining tenth."! 

The same Report denies that the slaves, in any one 
island, had, in regard to their legal condition, then derived the 
least benefit from the abolition acts. It represents them, also, 
as suffering the same miseries; as equally cut off from all 

* Debate of May 2d, 1814. f No. 50. 



366 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 




PART I. means of mental and religious improvement. In Ibeir article 
^'•^^'^>-^ upon this Report, the Edinburgh Reviewers ratify its exposi- 
tion, and speak thus of their "sugar planting brethren:" — 
" They not only have taken no steps to encourage religious 
instruction, but have again and again attempted to prevent the 
black populalioi'. from receiving it, in the only form in which 
it ever can reach ihtm, as things are at present constituted, 
namely, by missionary preachei-s. The zeal of pious men 
was beginning to carry the blessings of the gospel into the 
settlements, not sectaries merely, but Church-of-England 
missions. The wisdom of colonial legislation took the alarm; 
acts were regularly and in all the forms, passed, to stop, by 
main force, all such attempts at illuminating the hundreds of 
thousands of their Pagan subjects. The royal assent has been 
refused, but they are of sutficient efficacy in the interval, and 
as often as one is annulled, another is passed. In some of the 
colonies, the impediments to manumission are enormous. The 
tax imposed by the policy of the law in those enlightened lati- 
tudes, for ever closes the door to emancipation. In Jamaica,, 
the negroes are prohibited from being taught," &c. 

The work of Dickson and Steele, entitled Mitigation of 
Slavenj, of which I have already availed myself, is one of 
great and deserved authority on these subjects. It was pub- 
lished in London, in 1814, and the writers, who had long re- 
sided in the West Indies in high stations, go even beyond the 
African Institution in their representations of the nature of the 
slavery, and of the futility of the abolition acts, in that quarter. 

" The abolition," says Dr. Dickson, "of what is called the 
African slave trade, was, in itself, an object every way wor- 
thy of the long and arduous struggle which elfected it. But 
its relative value, as a corrective of West Indian abuses, hath 
been greatly overrated. The reader of this volume will see 
distinctly that, as many of the worst evils of the West Indian 
slavery were owing to other causes than the African slave 
trade, those evils could not possibly be remedied by the aboli- 
tion of that trade. This important position, so solidly esta- 
blished in the first part of the following collection, hath been 
deplorably exemplified, since the date of the abolition act, in 
the accounts of respectable individuals; and in the correspond- 
ence of the secretary of state with the West Indian governors. 
The facts alluded to, though but a mere specimen of the 
West Indian slavery, clearly show, that they flowed from a 
source inherent in that slavery itself. An additional proof is, 
that, notwithstanding the abolition of the slave trade, the low 
price of produce, and the exorbitant price of slaves, fall strong 



SLAVE TRADE. 367 

motives for economizing their lives,) the deaths among the sect. ix. 
slaves of one island^ in 1810, exceeded the births by above ten v.-'^-'-n^/ 
thousand. No cause of any extraordinary mortality is alleged; 
but that surplus of deaths appears to have happened in the 
common course of business. On the whole, we may safely 
affirm, that the general treatment of the slaves, in the old su- 
gar islands, has not received any material improvement for a 
century and a half The new islands have but copied the 
old; with the difference, that the hardships inseparable from 
the clearing of fresh lands have, in all cases, deplorably ag- 
gravated the mortality." 

" Facts leave not a doubt in the mind, that the harshness of 
the slave laws is but little softened by the lenity of the general 
practice in any of the sugar islands. Bad is the best treat- 
ment which the negroes experience in the West India colo- 
nies. They all perform their labour under the whip. Mr. 
Mathison, that sensible and candid planter, states broadly, in 
1811, the general practice of under-feeding from one end of 
Jamaica to the other. He also believes that excessive labour 
is one of the prevailing causes of depopulation among the 
slaves on that island." 

The registry system for the West Indies, is grounded 
upon the inefficacy of the abolition there; and, so far as 
appears by the facts disclosed in the House of Commons, the 
one has been found as nugatory as the other.* We may take 
an instance from the mouth of Mr. Wilberforce, of the state 
of things in Barbadoes, where, according to Dr. Dickson,! 
slavery is not near so bad as in most of the other islands. 

" Mr. Wilberforce said, (April 226, 1818,) that the situa- 
tion of the slaves in Barbadoes was most wretched. Lord 
Seaforth, when governor of the island, endeavoured to improve 
it by procuring a law to render the murder of a slave capita!. 
The island was at first enraged with the governor for pro- 
posing such a measure. When it was consented to, and the 
friends of humanity in this country were led to believe that 
the condition of the slaves in that island was much bettered, 
what was their surprise and disappointment, to find in two 
years after, when this law was laid upon the table of the 
house, that it was rendered entirely nugatory by a condition 
annexed to it; for it was provided, that the murder to be 
capital must be unprovoked." 

* See, on this head, the Twelfth Report of the African Institution, 
p. 42. 
I Mitigation of Slavery, p, 512. 



308 JSEGRO SLAVERif AMU 

PART I. '^ There were cases," Mr. Wilberforce continued, " in wiiich 
^'^'~'*''*'^^ a negro had purchased his freedom, and the freedom of his 
children, and trained them up with the most exemplary care, 
yet his offspring had afterwards been seized on by the creditors 
of his deceased master, because he had died an insolvent, and 
had been thus transported even to the mines of Mexico."* 

With such testimony as we have seen, notoriously extant, 
concerning the importation of negroes into the British West 
Indies, and their general condition, after the abolition act, 
the British minister, Lord Castiereagh, ventured, in his cor- 
respondence with the foreign powers in the year 1814,1 to 
make the following representation. " The experience of eight 
years which have elapsed since the total abolition of the slave 
trade, as far as that depended on Great Britain, by the Par- 
liament of the United Kingdom, has furnished complete proof 
that the settlements in the West Indies have not suffered by 
the want of fresh supplies of African labourers. These colo- 
nies continue to be in a nourishing condition, and since there 
has been no new importation of slaves, the treatment of those 
already possessed has improved, and the lights of religion and 
civilization have been diffused among them.'''' 

Anoiher striking case of ministerial hardihood is furnished 
in the following extract from a speech of Mr. Goulbourn, on 
the production of (he Registry returns to the House of Com- 
mons, on ihe 9ih June, 1819. "The apparent increase of 
negro population had not arisen from any illegal importation 
of slaves into our colonies, but was attributable to other 
causes. It might appear extraordinary that in one island the 
colonial slaves l)ad increased, in the course of two years, up- 
wards of five thousand. Some of these might be the produce 
of certain captures;^ but he was perfectly convinced that the 
augmentation was not attributable to any illegal traffic!" 

Representations of this son, in the face of those of the 
African Institution, in defiance of all fact and reason, belong 
to the old svstem which isexemj)liiied in the following passage 
of Mills' History of British India. 

" When the opinions which Lord Cornwallis expressed of 
the different departments of the Indian government, at the 
time when he undertook his reforms, (1790,) are attended to, 
it will not be easy to conceive a people suffering more intensely 

Hansurd's Parliamentarv Debates. 

;r at Madrid, 15tli July, 18: 

I sold 



I Official lett.-r to the Bntish minister at Madrid, 15th July, 1814. 
:\. That is to say, of foreign slave ships, whose cargoes have been sol 



jn the British islands 



SLAVE TRADE. 869 

by the vices of government. The administration of justice SECT.ix 
through all its-dejiartments in a state the most pernicious and '^^^^■'^' 
depraved; the public revenue levied upon principles incompati- 
ble with the existence of private property; the people sunk in 
poverty and wretchedness; such is the picture on the one hand: 
— Pictures of an unexampled state of prosperity were^ neve^'lhe- 
Zess, the pictures held forth at this very moment^ by speeches in 
parliament, to the parliament and the nation, — and the flattering 
pictures, as they were the pictures of the minister, governed the 
belief of parliament, and through parliament that of the nation.^''* 

16. The straia of the communications of the British go- 
vernment, respecting the slave trade, to the foreign powers, 
down to the conclusion of the treaty with Spain, in 1817, 
implied that every thing would be accomplished for the por- 
tion of Africa north of the line, when the abolition was uni- 
versal with regard to that portion. At every new arrangement, 
a descant was chaunted in Parliament, to the triumphant and 
generous zeal of the ministry, who, by the progressive deca- 
pitation of " the hydra," had nearly crowned all the generous 
sacrifices of Britain with the expected reward, in the security 
of Africa and the reformation of Europe. But there was 
reason to suspect that Louis X\1I1. would not so easily have 
made a virtue of necessity in 1815; nor Ferdinand, — urgent 
as were his pecuniary wants, and comparatively unimportant 
as the acquisition of negroes had become to Spain from the 
revolt of her colonies, — have prescribed so near a term to the 
legal slave trade of his subjects; had not these monarths been 
assured of an abundant and ready supply where it should be 
wanted, whatever anathemas and engagements might be ex- 
torted from ihem by the ascendant position and plausible re- 
clamations of Great Britain. All that circumstances made it 
natural to suspect, and rendered, indeed, obviously certain, 
has been realized, and is now at length proclaimed bj the 
British government itself. As the political scheme has reach- 
ed a crisis when a full and vivid disclosure of the truth is ne- 
cessary for progression and complete success, it is acknow- 
ledged outright, and vehemently bewailed, that nothing has as 
yet been accomplished for Africa, practically: thai the slave 
trade has been constantly increasing, and that no limits can 
be descried to its duration or its depredations. Such is the 
purport of the thirteenth Report, dated 24th March, 1819, of 
the African Institution; a report which bears intrinsically the 

* Book VI, vol. iii. p. 334. 

Vol. I— 3 A 



370 NEGRO SLAYERY AND 

PART I. character of a government-manifesto ; and Which furnishes 
"'^'K'^-'-'^-^ materials to complete a skeleton of the history of the abolition. 
I will use it freely in detailing the result of the British ma- 
nagement as respects France, Spain, and Portugal, severally, 
and the main ostensible object of retribution to Africa. 

And first, with regard to France, In the Appendix to the 
Report, there is an eloquent address on the subject of the 
slave trade, to the Congress of Aix-la-Chapel!e, which is said 
to have been distributed there by Mr. Clarkson, during the 
sittings in November, 1818. This address is evidently the 
work of the African Insiitution, under the direction of the 
British ministry; and the distribution of it- an expedient of 
both for their joint and several purposes. It contains the fol- 
lowing statement as to the French trade. 

"No sooner was peace proclaimed, than the traders in hu- 
man blood hastened from various quarters to the African 
shores, and, with a cupidiiy sharpened by past restraint, re- 
newed their former crimes." 

" Among the rest, the slave merchants of France, who had 
been excluded for upwards of twenty years, from any direct 
participation in this murderous traffic, now eagerly resumed 
it; and to this very hour, they continue openly to carry it on, 
notwithstanding the solemn renunciaiion of it by their own 
government, in 1815, and the prohibitory French laws which 
have since been passed to restrain them." 

" The revival and progress of the French slave trade have, 
in one respect, been peculiarly opprobrious, and attended with 
aggravated cruelty and mischief." 

" During the ten years which preceded the restoration of 
Senegal and Goree to France, no part of the African coast, 
Sierra Leone excepted, had enjoyed so entire an exemption 
from the miseries produced by the slave trade as those settle- 
ments, and the country in their vicinage." 

" The suppression of the traffic was there nearly complete; 
and, in consequence, a striking increase of population and of 
agriculture in the surrounding districts, with a proportionate 
improvement in other respects, gave a dawn of rising prospe- 
rity and happiness, highly exhilarating to every benevolent 
mind." 

" It was in the month of January, 1817, that these interest- 
ing settlements were restored to France; and melancholy, 
indeed, had been the effiscts: no sooner was the transfer com- 
pleted, than, in defiance of the declarations by which the king 
of France had prohibited the slave trade to his subjects, that 
trade was instantly renewed, and extended in all directions. 



SLAVE TRADE. 371 

The ordinary excitements to the native chiefs, have produced sect. ix. 
more than the ordinary horrors. In the short space of a single "■^t^^.-^^ 
year, alter the change of flags, the adjoining countries, though 
previously flourishing in peace and abundance, exhibited but 
one friglitful spectacle of misery and devastation." 

" Now, let it here be recollected, that France had profess- 
ed, in the face of the civilized world, her abhorrence of this 
guilty commerce. In the definitive treaty of the 30th of No- 
vember, 1815, she had pledged herself 'to the entire and 
effectual abolition of a traffic so odious in itself, and so highly 
repugnant to the laws of religion and nature.' As early as 
the 30th of July, 1815, she had informed the ambassadors of 
the allied powers, that directions had actually been issued, 
' in order that on the part of France the traffic in slaves might 
cease from that time, every where and for ever.' She had, 
even previously to this, assured the British government, that 
the settlements of Senegal and Goree, restored to her by treaty, 
should not be made subservient to the revival of the slave 
trade. Yet, notwithstanding all this, no sooner do these set- 
tlements revert to her dominion, than the work of rapine, and 
carnage, and desolation commence; every opening prospect of 
improvement is crushed; thousands of miserable captives, of 
every age and sex, are crowded into the pestilential holds of 
slave ships, and subjected to the well known horrors of the 
middle passage, in order to be transported to the French colo- 
nies in the West Indies. There, such of them as may survive, 
are doomed to pass their lives in severe and unremitting labour, 
exacted from them by the merciless lash of the cart-whip in 
the hands of a driver. It would admit of proof, that proba- 
bly at no period of the existence of this opprobrious traffic, 
has Africa suffered more intensely from its ravages than dur- 
ing a part of the time which has elapsed since the re-establish- 
ment of the peace of the civilized world." 

In another part of the Appendix, it is averred, and sufficient- 
ly proved to the date of September, 1818, that the French 
authorities in Africa allow the slave trade to be carried on to 
any extent, under their command; that in Senegal and Goree, 
they themselves are interested in carrying it on; and that the 
French vessels of war connive at the departure of slave ships. 
In the body of the Report, positive information to the same 
effect, is announced in this language — " The subscribers to 
the Institution will no doubt recollect the painful task which 
devolved upon the directors last year, in detailing the state of 
the slave trade on the coast of Africa, and more particularly 
that part of it which lies in the neighbourhood of the French 



372 JNKGKO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. settlements of Senegal and Goree. Of the statements tlieu 
"'-^^'"^^•^ made, ample confirmation has since been received, accompa- 
nied by additional inlormation of a similarly distressing na- 
ture. A considerable slave trade appears also to have been 
carried on by French subjects at Aliredra, and other places in 
the river Gambia. The information, indeed, which the direc- 
tors have received subsecjnentiy to their last Report, confirms 
the statement therein contained, of the existence, to a great 
extent, of this traffic in the French settlements on the coast 
of Africa," &c. 

So much for the unconditional restoration of the French 
possessions, and the five years charter for organized kidnapping 
and murder! 

In the debate in the House of Commons, of February 9th, 
1818, which I have already mentioned, some curious particu- 
lars were disclosed respecting the French slave trade, ihat de- 
serve to be known, in addition to the above. I will report 
them as they were stated by Sir James Mackintosh. " It 
being discovered that the trade was still carried on by France 
with great vigour, application was made by Sir Charles 
Stewart, the British ambassador, in January, 1817, for co- 
])ies of 'Laws, Ordinances, Instructions, and other public 
acts, for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.' The Due de 
Richelieu had nothing to communicate but a mere colonial 
regulation passed eight clays before, prohibiting the importation 
of slaves into the French colonies. Notwithstanding the as- 
sertion of Prince Talleyrand's letter, in spite of the more 
solemn affirmation of the treaty, it appears that France had 
taken no legal measure for the abolition, during eighteen 
months, after she professed she had adopted it. What she did 
at that time was imperfect, and it did not appear that she had 
done any thing since." So little had she done, indeed, that Sir 
William Scott found himself 'obliged to release, in 1817, a 
French slave ship detained by a British cruiser, on the ground 
that there was no sufficient proof that the French vessel, in 
carrying on the slave trade, had violated the laws of France. 

Let us now see how tiie case stands with respect to Spain 
and Portugal, whom it would have been so easy to subdue to 
the purpose of abolition, ten years ago, and the mischiefs of 
whose legal appearance in (he trade, might, therefore, have 
been averted. The Appendix to the Report contains a series 
of queries, dated December, 1816, addressed by Lord Castle- 
reagh to the Institution, respecting the state of the trade during 
the preceding twenty-five years. Part of the information com- 
municated in reply is as follows: "The number of slaves 



SLAVE TRADE. 



373 



withdrawn from western Africa during the last twenty-five SECT. ix. 
years, is necessarily involved in much uncertainty. There is v-s^-n^'^^ 
reason to believe that the export of ihe Portuguese was much 
more considerable than the amount supposed, 15,000. Pre- 
vious to the British abolition, the Portuguese had conlined their 
trade almost entirely to the Bight of Benin, and the coast to the 
southward of it, but in consequence of the reduction in the 
price of slaves on the Windward and Gold Coasts, they were 
gradually drawn thither. The whole of the slave trade, whe- 
ther legal or contraband, passes, with very few exceptions, 
under (he Spanish and Portuguese flags. The Spanish flag is 
a mere disguise, and covers the property of unlawful traders, 
whether English, American, or others." 

" Since the Portuguese have been restricted by treaty from 
trading for slaves on certain parts of the African coast, ihey 
have resorted to similar expedients for protecting their slave 
trade expeditions to places within the prohibited district. 
And at the present moment, there is little doubt, that a consi- 
derable part of the apparently Spanish slave trade, which is 
carrying on to the north of the equator, where the Portuguese 
are forbidden to buy slaves, is really a Portuguese trade." 

" A farther use is now found for the Sj)anish flag, in pro- 
tecting the French slave traders; and it is affirmed, that the 
French ships fitted out in France, for the slave trade, call at 
Corunna for the purpose of effecting a nominal transfer of the 
property engaged in the illegal voyage, to some Spanish house, 
and thus obtaining the requisite evidence of Spanish owner- 
.ship." 

" In consequence of these uses to which the Spanish flag 
has been applied, a great increase of the apparently Spanish 
slave trade has taken place of late. And as the flag of that 
nation is permitted to range over the whole extent of the Afri- 
can coast, it seems to keep alive the slave trade in places 
from which it would otherwise have been shut out; and it has 
of late revived that trade in situations where it had been pre- 
viously almost wholly extinguished." 

" The Portuguese flag is now chiefly seen to the south of 
the equator, although sometimes the Portuguese traders do 
not hesitate still to resort to the rivers between Whydaer and 
the equator, even without a Spanish disguise. The only two 
cruizers which have recently visited that part of the coast, 
found several ships under the Portuguese flag openly trading 
for slaves, in Sago and the Bight of Benin." 

"The slave trade has certainly been carried on during the 
last two years, to a great extent north of the equator. The 



374 JNEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. native chiefs and traders who began to believe at length that 
^-^•^•v"'^^ the abolition was likely to be permanently maintained, have 
learnt from recent events to distrust all such assurances. 
Notwithstanding all that has been said and done, they now 
see the slave traders again sweeping the whole coast without 
molestation. It would be difficult fully to appreciate the deep 
and lasting injury inflicted on northern Africa, by the trans- 
actions of the iast two or three years. An abolition oa the 
part of Spain would at once deliver the whole of northern 
Africa from the slave trade, provided effectual measures were 
taken to seize and punish illicit traders- By the prolongation 
of the Spanish slave trade, on the contrary, not only is the 
whole of northern Africa, which would otherwise be exempt, 
given up to the ravages of that traffic, and the progress already 
made in improvement sacrificed, but facilities arc afforded of 
smuggling into every island of the West Indies; which could 
not otherwise exist, and which, while slave ships may law- 
fully pass from Africa to Cuba, it would, perhaps, be impos- 
sible to prevent." 

This was the state of things, according to the Institution, 
at the end of 1816. We will now see what it was at the 
beginning of the present year, notwithstanding the conven- 
tions signed with Spain and Portugal in the interval. '' The 
African slave trade," says the Report itself, " is still unhappily 
carried on to an enormous extent under the foreign flags, with 
aggravated horrors. The directors have to lament the enor- 
mous extent, not of the French slave trade only; that of Spain 
and Portugal appears also to have greatly increased. Not- 
withstanding the great pecuniary sacrifices made by Great 
Britain to these nations, their subjects are stated by the go- 
vernor of Sierra Leone to be now deeper in blood than ever." 
The Report mentions the fact, that at the distance of more 
than a year from the date of the Spanish and Portuguese con- 
ventions, the British naval commander in chief on the African 
coast had received no instructions as to the measures to be 
taken in pursuance of them, nor as yet had any commission 
been established, as they prescribed. 

The estimate which the directors make in the Appendix 
to the Report, of the number of negroes transported of late 
years from Africa under the Spanish and Portuguese flags, 
falls greatly short of the real amount. Dr. Thorpe, whose 
testimony, on this head, is certainly entitled to weight, has 
made some statements which agree better with the direct 
knowledge which we have in this country, of the importation 
into the Spanish islands and into Brasil. He alleges that the 



SLAVE TRADE. 



375 



commissioners appointed by the British government to survey sect, ix, 
the West Coast of Africa, three years after it had abolisiied •^-^^^^'^^ 
the trade, reported eighty thousand as the number of negroes 
annually carried away, and divided equally between the Por- 
tuguese and Spaniards. He computes, himself, from returns 
made by persons residing in the Havanna, in the Brasils, and 
on the coast of Africa, that the Spaniards carried from the 
West Coast, in 1817, one hundred thousand; and the Portu- 
guese not less. He adds forty thousand as the number taken 
by other nations, and from other parts of that quarter of the 
globe. There is something almost overpowering for a real 
philanthropist in the observations with which this writer con- 
cludes his calculations. "As it appears that in 1807, about 
sixty thousand inhabitants of Africa were annually enslaved, 
and in 1817 two hundred and forty thousand, we may judge 
of her present deplorable condition, when the very cause of 
her barbarous and degraded state has increased four- fold; we 
should recollect the unshaken testimony presented to Parlia- 
ment, which established her miserable condition before 1807; 
and we cannot but lament that all the professions for her hap- 
piness, and promises for her civilization, reiterated since that 
time, have been perfectly delusive."* 

Dr. Thorpe asserts, also, that at the time Great Britain had 
the right of search, nineteen out of twenty of the contraband 
slave vessels escaped. One cannot but think that their success 
would not have been quite so great, had her cruizers exercised 
the same zeal and vigilance in pursuing them, as they did in 
hunting down the commerce of the United States, under the 
Orders in Council. 

In the first negotiations respecting the trade, which Lord 
Castlereagh opened with the French cabinet after the treaty 
of 1814, he suggested, as a desirable arrangement, the con- 
cession of a mutual right of search and capture in certaiii 
latitudes, between France and Great Britain, in order to pre- 
vent an illicit exportation from the coast of Africa. The 
Duke of Wellington made the proposition to the Prince of 
Benevento, but soon discovered that it was " too disagreeable 
to the French government and natii)n, to admit of a hope of 
its being urged with success."! I do not find from the history 
of the conferences at Vienna in 1815, that it was more than 
hinted in those conferences. Spain and Portugal, however, 
in their mock renunciation of the trade north of the equinoc- 

* P. 13. view of the Increase of the Slave Trade. 

t See his letter to Lord Castlereagh of the 5th Nov. 1814. 



37G 



iNEGRO SLAVERY AND 



PART I. tial line, acceded to a stipulation of like tenor. Great satis- 
^'^'^'''^^'' faction was expressed in Parliament with the arrangement, 
when the Spanish treaty came under discussion. " The in- 
* troduction of the right of search and bringing in for condem- 

nation in time of peace," was declared to be " a precedent of 
the utmost importance." Of this precedent the British mi- 
nister resolved to avail himself at once. There is a quasi 
olficial exposition of his proceedings in the thirteenth Report 
of the African Institution, of which I will abstract as much 
as may convey a sufficient idea of the new turn given to the 
question of abolition. 

The ministers of the great powers were assembled in Lon- 
don to confer on the subject: all attended readily except the 
representative of Portugal, who consented to appear only on 
condition of a perfect freedom of action being left to his so- 
vereign. At a meeting held in February, 1818, Lord Castle- 
reagh produced a note, which alleged, among other things, 
That, since the peace, a considerable revival of the slave trade 
had taken place, especially north of the line, and that the 
traffic was principally of the illicit description: — That, as 
early as July, 1816, a circular intimation had been given to 
all British cruizers, that the right of search (being a bellige- 
rent right) had ceased with the war: — That it was proved be- 
yond the possibility of a doubt, that unless the right to visit 
vessels engaged in the slave trade should be established by 
mutual concessions on the part of the maritime states, the 
illicit traffic must not only continue to subsist, but increase: 
That even if the traffic icere universally abolished^ and a single 
state should refuse to submit its Jlag to the visitation of vessels oj 
other states, nothing effectual would have been done: ' That the 
plenipotentiaries should, therefore, enter into an engagement 
to concede mutually the right of search, ad hoc^ to their ships 
of war, &c. They did not deem themselves authorised to 
proceed so far, but undertook to transmit the proposition to 
their respective courts. 

It does not appear that the American minister was invited 
to be a party to these conferences. To him, however. Lord 
Castlereagh addressed a special letter in the month of June, 
1818, enclosing copies of the treaties made with Spain and 
Portugal, and inviting the government of the United States 
to enter into the plan digested in those treaties, for the repres- 
sion of the slave trade, which must, otherwise, prove irreduci- 
ble. The answer of the American government, communicated 
at the end of December by the American ambassador, is de- 
tailed in the Report of the Institution. It asserts the deep and 



SLAVE TRADE. 



ST 



unfeigned solicitude of the United States, for the universal sect. ix. 
extirpation of the slave trade; but, with all due comity, de- ^«-''"^^""**-' 
clines the proposed arrangements, as being of a charaetei 
"not adapted (o the circumstances or instiluiions of the Uni- 
ted States." Truly, the United States had sufficienily proved 
the British right of search in lime of war, to be careful not 
to create one for the season of peace. 

No answer had been received from the courts whose minis- 
ters attended the conferences in London, when the congress 
of Aix-la-Chapelle furnished ihe Briiish government with the 
fairest opportunity of pushing (he adoption of its whole pro- 
ject. Thither, on the heels of Lord Casllereagh, Mr. (lark- 
son repaired with the memorial, which I have already cited. 
ft stated to the assembled sovereigns — That, "• in |)oint of fact, 
little or no jjrogress had been made in practically abolishing^ 
the slave trade:" That " all the declarations and engagements 
of the European powers as to abolition, must prove perfectly 
unavailing, unless new means were adopted:" That the only 
means left were — the universal concession of the mutual 
right of search and detention; and the solemn proscrij)lion of 
the slave trade, as Piracy under the law of nations. 
" Lord Castlereagh's official representations were of the same 
purport, and were answered in separate notes from the pleni- 
potentiaries of Russia, France, Austria, and Prussia. The 
respondents profess their readiness to make a combined address 
to the court of Brasil, in order to engage it to accelerate, o* 
much as the circumstances and necessities of its situation may 
permit^ the entire abolition of the trade; but all reject the 
proposition of a mutual right of search, that new sine quanon 
of the salvation of Africa. France, whose concurrence, ac- 
cording to Lord Casllereagh, was, " above all others, import- 
ant," gave the niost peremptory refusal; and suggested, on 
her side, a plan of common police for the trade, which w^ould 
enable the several jiotvers to know the transactions of each 
other, and would keep each government well apprized of all 
abuses within its jurisdiction. Upon the emperor Alexander, 
both Lord Castlereagh and the directors of the African Insti- 
tution had counted, as a sure and irresistible auxiliary. The 
" unkindest cut," however, would seem to have come from 
his Russian Majesty. The answer of his plenipotentiary was 
fitted to produce a double disconcertion; and might be sus- 
pected of a little malice in the design. Besides alleging that 
it appeared to the Russian cabinet, beyond a doubt, that there 
v^ere some states which no consideration would induce to 
submit their navigation to a principle of such high importance 

Vol. I. —3 B 



378 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PAirr 1. " as the right of visit," he proposed an expedient to effect the 
^■^"■^"^ common purpose, which went to deprive England of her sway, 
and unembarrassed action, on the west coast of Africa. This 
expedient consisted in "an institution, the seat of which 
should be a central point on that coast, and in the forma- 
tion of which all the Christian states should take a part.'" 
It is thus particularly described in the Russian note: "■'' De- 
clared for every neutral, to be estranged from all political and 
local interests, like the fraternal and Christian alliance, of 
which it would be a practical manifestation, this institution 
would pursue the single object of strictly maintaining the 
execution of the law. It would consist of a maritime force, 
composed of a sufficient number of ships of war, appropri- 
ated to the service assigned to them; of a judicial power, 
which should judge all crimes relating to the trade, according 
to a legislation established upon the subject, by the common 
wisdom; of a supreme council, in which would reside the au- 
thority of the institution, — which would regulate the operations 
of the maritime force — would revise the sentences of the tri- 
bunals — would put them in execution — would inspect all the 
details, and would render an account of its administration to 
the future European conferences. The right of visit and de- 
tention would be granted to this institution, as the means of 
fulfilling its end; and perhaps no maritime nation would 
refuse to submit its flag to this police, exercised in a limited 
and clearly defined manner, and by a power too feeble to 
allow of vexations; too disinterested on all maritime and 
commercial questions, and, above all, too widely combined 
in its elements, not to observe a severe, but impartial justice 
towards all." 

Neither tlie French plan of surveillance^ nor the Amphyc- 
tionic Institution of his Imperial Majesty, suited the views of 
Lord Castlereagh, who could not be persuaded of the practi- 
cability of either. His lordship finally proposed to qualify 
the desired right of search, by limiting its duration to a certain 
number of years; and by '.his and other modifications, " he flat- 
ters himself," says the thirteenth Report of the African Institu- 
tion, " that he has made a considerable impression in remov- 
ing the strong repugnance which was at first fell to the mea- 
sure." But the directors themselves do not appear to be so 
sanguine, if we may judge from the following passage of the 
Report: "Thus ended the conferences, and proceedings at 
Aix-la-Chapelle, respecting the more effectual abolition of the 
African slave trade, and thus have the directors been disap- 
pointed in the hopes which they had entertained, of seeing the 



SLAVE TRADE. 379 

noble principles, announced to the world by tbe congress at sr.CT.ix. 
Vienna, carried into complete effect, by the sovereigns and s^'v^n*^ 
plenipotentiaries assenibltd in the course of the last autumn. 
Whether such another opportunity of bringing those principles 
into action, may ever again occur, cannot be foreseen; but the 
directors must be aiiovved to express their unfeigned regret, 
that so very favourable a combination of circumstances has 
led to such unimportant results.''^ 

The plan of England to obtain from the congress a sen- 
tence of piracy upon the slave trade, appeared to the sove- 
reigns rather wanling in courtesy towards their royal brother 
of the Brasils, while he persisted in authorizing his subjects 
to prosecute it indefinitely as to number. It was evident, 
said the emperor of Russia, that the general promulgation 
of such a law could not take place, until Portugal had 
totally renounced the trade. At the same time, the con- 
gress might not have been able to discern the consistency, 
of proclaiming that a capital crime in the subjects of one 
nation, which those of another might do with impunity, 
under the sanction of receni treaties. It was certainly an 
awkw^ard duty for an English ministry, to solicit the denun- 
ciation of piracy against the slave trade, which the Englisii 
nation had, for two centuries, struggled to monopolize. The 
reflection upon all the generations of that whole tract of time, 
was rather too strong, in the use of such language as this — 
"Slave-trading always involves man-stealing and murder. 
Even on the passage its murders are numerous,"* &c. The 
Lord Chancellor Eldon could not have thought so, when, op- 
posing the British abolition in 1807, "he entered into a 
review of the measures adopted by England, respecting 
the trade, which, he contended, had been sanctioned by Par- 
liaments in which sat the wisest lawyers, the most learned 
divines, and the most excellent statesmen."! Nor could 
Lord Havvkesbury, when he moved that the words " in- 
consistent Avith the principles of justice and humanity," 
should be struck out of the preamble of the British abo- 
lition bi!l.| Nor could Lord Sidmouth, when he said, 
" to the measure itself he had no objection, if it could be 
accomplished unthout detriment to the West India islands:''''^ 
Nor the Earl of Westmoreland, in declaring that " though 
he should see the presbyterian and the prelate, the metho- 
dist and field preacher, the jacobin and murderer, unite in 

* The Memorial, f Hansard's Debates, vol. viii. t Ibid. § Ibid. 



380 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. favour of the measure of abolition, he would raise his voice 

<^~^'"^>-^' agaiiisi it in Puriiameut."* 

Throughout the tonferences and negoliations above men- 
tiontd, we find the coniinenlal j)owers beiraving a rooted 
distrusi of the motives of the British government. The 
vehemence of its execrations upon ihe trade; the intensity of 
its present zeal for the well'are of Africa, contributed to excite 
suspicion, when compared with the language I have just 
cited, and with the toleration of the Spanish and Portuguese 
traffic before the peace; — with the treaty of 1814, by which 
England, hiiving secured for herself, in the general distribution 
of spoil, some favourite objects of interest, delivered over to the 
miseries now so pathetically described, whole provinces which 
she boasted of having entirely relieved — with the free export 
of fire-arms and ammunition from the British ports to the 
coast of Africa; and with the existence of slavery in its 
w^orst form, in all the British settlements, including those of 
Asia Minor and the East Indies. It was remarked that, as 
soon as it was seen in England, in 1806, that her trade 
would be abolished, Parliament petitioned the king to nego- 
tiate with foreign powers for the abolition of theirs; but that 
nothing was vigorously attempted in this way, — ail had been 
languor and connivance, — until the conclusion of peace, when 
the restitution took place, of considerable colonies, which, 
being stocked regularly and cheaply with slaves, while those 
retained by England received only a precarious and dear sup- 
ply, might speedily outgrow the latter, and supplant them in 
the markets of the world; and when on other grounds avowed 
and pressed in Parliament, the commercial interests of Eng- 
land evidently required, if not universal abolition, at least the 
restriction to the south of the equator. 

France knew that it was with British capital and shipping 
that her merchants had embarked in the trade, immediately 
after the peace; Spain and Portugal, that the greater part of 
the trade carried on under their flags was on British ac- 
count; and they were somewhat incredulous, when they 
were told of the British negotiators being " the organs of 
a people unanimous in its condemnation; apprized of all 
its horrors; impressed with all its guilt; foremost in re- 
moving its pollution from themselves, and waiting with con- 
fident, but impatient hope, the glad tidings of its universal 
abolition." None of the powers had ever found those organs 
disposed to make a sacrifice for this object, beyond an island, 

* Ibid. 



SLAVE TRADE. 



381 



a subsidy, or a largess; which might be considered as olFered sect. ix. 
with a view to ample compensation in lucre; for Mr. Wilber- *-*^"^^'>-^ 
force was implicitly to be believed, when he said, in the 
House of Commons, in addition to what 1 have already quoted 
from him of a like tenor, that, " in a commercial point of 
view, it was of incalculable advantage to have the supply of 
that large tract of country, from the Senegal down to the 
Niger, an extent of more than 7500 miles, with (he necessa- 
ries and gratifications which British manufactures and com- 
merce afford."* Parliament still contained several of the 
hitherto inflexible anti-abolitionists, who had harangued with- 
out end to prove the justice and humanity of the trade at 
large; its very unanitnity, therefore, where that of foreign 
powers was concerned, had the effect of lessening confidence 
abroad. Such a phenomenon as the union of General Gas- 
coyne with Mr. Wilberforce, of Lord Westmoreland with 
Lord Grenville, in proclaiming the unequalled guilt and in- 
famy of the slave traffic, could be viewed by the Talleyrands 
and the Nesselrodes only as indicating a universal sense, of 
the great importance of the end in view, to the commercial 
ascendancy of Great Britain. 

It is easily seen, from the slrain of the diplomatic notes ad- 
dressed to Lord Castlereagh at Aix la-Chapelle, that the con- 
gress had a common jealousy of the designs of England upon 
the African coast, and acted in concert in disappointing the 
hopes, and alarming the polic^y, of her plenipotentiary. To 
maintain a fleet upon that coast would obviously be in the 
power of none but England, so that the idea of reciprocity in 
the right of search was illusive; and it was not contrary to 
the entire analogy of British maritime administration, lo sup- 
pose, that, in this case, it might be perverted to the ends of 
rapacity, oppression, or monopoly. 

The invidiousness of the proceedings of the English states- 
men, and the incredulity which they have rendered inveterate 
in the foreign cabinets, as to their professions, in this matter 
of the slave trade, make it doubtful whether the cause of real, 
universal abolition has not suffered by the intervention of 
England. Had the appeal to the justice, humanity, magnani- 
mity, and true interests of France, Spain, or Portugal, come 
from a quarter where no selfish or hostile views could be sus- 
pected to lurk; had it been urged with steady effort, with 
the directness of conscious benevolence, and with only apart 
of that eloquence and sagacity which Great Britain has dis- 

• February 11, 1818. 



38^ 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 



PART r. played in tlie argument, it might, in (he end, have eflectuallj 
^■'^'>^'^>>^ reclaimed those powers, or have raised against them such a 
combination of induence as would have led to the same happy 
result. But, in dealing with Great Britain, the calculation 
with them has been, how to avoid a suspected snare; to coun- 
teract an insidious rival policy; to preserve the interests which 
they ostensibly sacrificed in compliance with the particular 
necessities of their situation Hence a more eager and obsti- 
nate purpose of filling their colonies with negroes in every 
practicable mode; a greater callousness to the shame and 
criminality of the traffic — hence on the part of other powers, 
giving the same construction to the instances of England, 
little disposition to adopt any system that should cut off their 
supplies, or second her aims. Hence, too, the unmeaning en- 
gagements about abolition after a certain period of enjoyment, 
which only serve to stimulate the exertions of the slave trader, 
and aggravate the immediate desolation of Africa; " the vows 
of future amendment coupled with present perseverance in 
guilt;" sacrifices promised to be made, with a determination 
to prove faithless; solemn assurances of future rectitude, for 
Avhose accomplishment we are to wait until commercial jea- 
lousy shall cease, avarice be satiated, or the sword drawn to 
enforce performance. 

More of cant, hypocrisy, and inconsistency, has never dis- 
graced any occasion, than this of the abolition of the slave 
trade. While it is admitted universally, and solemnly pro- 
claimed by the potentates, to be the opprobrium of Christen- 
dom, and the bane of Africa; " repugnant to the principles of 
humanity and essential morality,"* they enter into compacts 
among themselves for guaranteeing to one or the other, the 
unmolested prosecution of it, during such a term as the con- 
venience of the party may require; and in no case is there an 
intention of observing the limitation prescribed. France de- 
mands, to use the language of Lord Grenville, five years of 
injustice and rapine, of murder and violence, laying waste a 
Avhole quarter of the globe, that she may recruit her colonial 
vigour, and particularly that she may have the facility of re- 
peopling St. Domingo with slaves, in case of the reduction of 
that island; England, the tutelary genius of Africa, specially 
ratifies this demand: Portugal and Spain must have eight 
years of the same horrible career, and will not agree to desist 
even then, unless their commercial relations with England 

* See the Declaration of the Congress of Vienna, 8th Feb. 1815. 



SLAVE TRADE. 



383 



shall undergo a particular change: ihcy acknowledge the SECT. IX. 
teeming wickedness of the traffic; but, unluckily, they have v^^^^^^*** 
the prosperity of their dominions to promote: England dis- 
claims all idea of giving the law on the subject, or pushing 
matters to an extremi(y:* Russia, Austria, and Prussia, can- 
not undertake to coerce any power, either as to time or space; 
and decide that each is to be left to consult " the prejudices, 
habits, and interests of its subjects, and the circumstances of 
its situation:" Ail pledge themselves, in the last place, to make 
every possible effort to accelerate the triumph of the magnifi- 
cent cause of universal abolition! 

The only governments, in fact, which have acted sincerely 
andindepenclently^ in relation to it, are those of Denmark and 
the United Slates. I am free to confess that no small share 
of the illicit trade has been carried on by Americans, or by 
persons assuming the character; and that no inconsiderable 
number of negroes has been clandestinely imported into the 
most southern parts of our territory. Perhaps the Federal 
Government has not exerted all the vigilance in repressing 
these abuses, which their enormity required; but the heartiest 
detestation of them is common to it and to the majority of the 
nation. The least participation in the slave traffic is certainly 
a deep stain, and a heinous guilt. The violence which this 
traffic does, in its very conception, to the rights and obliga- 
tions of human nature; its effect in brutalizing those who 
pursue it; the flagitious and ferocious practices with which it 
is attended; the ineffable, accumulated woes which it inflicts 
upon its defenceless victims; the immeasurable evils of every 
kind with which it overspreads the continent of Africa, and 
threatens that of America — conspire to invest it with a charac- 
ter of greater deformity, scandal, depravity, and pernicious- 
ness, than belongs to any other general crime of the civilized 
world. I have been the more liberal of details concerning 
the horrors of the British trade, in order to attract a more 
earnest attention to our own late offences of the sort, about 
which we have been too supine; and against which the voice 
of every good citizen and moral man, as well as the voice and 
the arm of the government, should be perpetually raised. 

17. Widely different, under the circumstances in which we 
find ourselves, is the case of retaining the wretched race of 
Africa in bondage. The most zealous of the English philan- 

* See tlie Protocol of the third conference at Vienna. Feb. 4th, 
1815. 



384 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 



PAUT r. thropisls have not carried their aims so far, with respect to 
^-*'^'"*»^ West Jiuliu slavery, as its immediate or speedy abolition. I 
have quoted, in my seventh section, the protest entered by 
the Edinburgh Review, against the imputation of such a de- 
sign, either to the Reviewers or any of the adversaries of the 
slave trade. That journal has returned several times to the 
topic; in the eighth number, for instance, in the following lan- 
guage: — " It is scarcely necessary to premise, that the advo- 
cates for the abolition of the slave trade most cordially repro- 
bate all idea of emancipating the slaves that are already in 
our j)!antations. Such a scheme indeed is sujfficiently answered by 
the story of the galley slaves in Don Quixotte^ and we are 
persuaded, never had any place in the minds of those en- 
lightened and judicious persons, who have contended in this 
cause." 

So late as 1817, Lord Holland, one of the most devoted 
among the associates of Mr. Wilberforce, moved, in the 
House of Peers, a petition to the Prince R»gcnt, praying 
that the idea of emancipating the West India slaves might be 
disowned by royal proclamation throughout the islands; 
which was done accordingly. Their unfitness for freedom^ 
no less than the danger to the while inhabiiants, has been al- 
leged as the motive for discarding all projects implying their 
liberation. This has always been treated in England as a 
question of practicability, not of strict justice. To give a 
specimen of the mode of reasoning on the subject, I will ex- 
tract a passage from a speech of Mr. W. Grant in the House 
of Commons. 

" Mr. W. Grant said, he had ever conceived that the end 
ef legislation was to do good, and to consider justice in our 
means of doing it. Now, there were some occasions on 
which it was impossible to do so; and there the greatest good 
must be the object even in violation of strict justice He 
would illustrate his meaning by an instance. Let them sup- 
pose a case of emancipation. Wherever slavery existed, 
there necessarily existed opjM-ession, and the continuance of 
slavery was consequently a continuance of oppression. If he 
had professed to do justice, and a slave were to ask him, how 
could he accomil for the use he had in view in making him a 
slave; if he mf^ant to do jus'ice, he should not continue him a 
slave.' he should answer, that his means were circumscribed, 
and that it was true philanthropy to effect ihe greatest good, 
which the nature of the case woidd admit. If he forbore to 
do an act, abstractly an act of humanity, but which would 
produce a different consequence, he surely acted rightly: 



SLAVE TRADE. 



385 



were he to act otherwise, he shoul J not satisfy his con- SECT. IX. 
science, because he should not diminish the misery he wish- ^^-^-v"*^ 
ed to relieve." 

Expcdienry is thus justified, and allowed on all hands to 
prevail, Vo'iching ihe existence of slavery in the West Indies. 
Thai the Bruish government possesses the power to suppress 
it, no one ventures to deny. The Edinburgh Review has 
scouted (he supposition of armed resistance on ihe part of the 
islands, to any exeriion of the supreme authority of the 
mo iier < ountry. " If," says the 50th number, " a threat of 
folioivrng \\t example of America, that is, of rebelling, be 
held out, then the answer is, that what was boldness in the 
one case, would be impudence in the oiher, and England 
must be reduced very low, indeed, before she can feel greatly 
alarmed at this threat from a Caribbee island." She is, 
therefore, responsible for the existence of slavery in the West 
Indies, as much as if it existed within her own bosom, and we 
might retoit upon her the phrase of the Edinburgh Review 
directed against us, — '' That slavery should exist among men 
who know ihe value of liberty, and profess to understand its 
principles, is the consummation of wickedness.'''' 

Were the question of the abolition of West India slavery to 
be treated as one of strict justice, England could have no 
escape from its fullest pressure. The circumstance of her 
having created and fostered the slavery itself; of her having 
been chiefly instrumental in making it the fate of so many 
millions of the race of its victims there, would give every 
possible degree of force and solemnity to the abstract obliga- 
tion in the case. While, therefore, slavery continues to ex- 
ist undisturbed in the West Indies, the Briton who approves 
of the policy of maintaining it, cannot deny to the United 
States, the benefit of the plea of expediency in regard to the 
emancipation of their blacks. To avert a personal danger 
from her planters, and to maintain her lucrative connexion 
with the islands, England abstains from " tearing off the 
manacles," — -the most galling that ever were imposed — from 
nearly a million of that race; she even abstains, upon consi- 
derations of possible disadvantage, as the postponement of the 
Registry Bill shows, from measures adapted merely to the 
amelioration of their condition. 

I have, I think, proved in the first pages of this sec- 
tion, that but a slight degree of blame attaches to the co- 
lonists, respecting the existence of slavery in this country; 
and that their descendants were in no measure culpable, as 
for down as the declaration of our independence. They 

Vol. I.— 3 C 



386 ISEGRO SLAVEKV AND 

PART I, were no more so, than they would have been, lor an heredi- 
''x^'^'^^*^ tary gout or leprosy, ascribable in its origin to the vices of 
the parent state, and which the authors of it should have stu- 
diously prevented thcni from curing. The continuation of 
the system of slavery among us, during the Revolution, was as 
much a matter of necessity, as it ever had been before. It 
was not the time for the southern states, (o make the experi- 
ment of a fundamental alteration in the whole economy of 
their existence, when they were contending with a ruthless 
foe who sought to array the whole body of negroes against the 
whites, and who would have availed himself of the greater 
freedom of action which emancipation must have afforded the 
latter, to accomplish his diabolical purpose. 

But the northern and middle states, more auspiciously cir- 
cumstanced, began the work of extirpating the evil from their 
own bosom, even before the termination of the revolutionary 
struggle. In 1780, Pennsylvania decreed a gradual aboli- 
tion; in the same year an immediate one was virtually effect- 
ed in Massachusetts; the example of Pennsylvania was fol- 
lowed throughout New England at the distance of a few 
years; all that portion of the Union, north of the state of De- 
laware, has since pursued the same course. 

It was more than a practical moralist could expect or ex- 
act, that the southern states, retaining sovereign governments 
of their own, should trust the federal councils with the 
determination of such a question, as the emancipation of 
their slaves, on which their highest interests of property and 
safely were immediately dependent. No power to decide for 
them on this question could be communicated, according to 
the drif! and nature of our union, either to the Revolutionary 
Confederation, or to the actual government. The power of 
legislating in all respects for the territory belonging to the 
United States, accrued necessarily, however, to both; and it 
was exercised in relation to slavery, by the first, in a manner 
to evince the rectitude of the general spirit on the subject, ren- 
dered impotent in the south by the strongest of impulses, if not 
the first of duties — self-preservation. The ordinance enacted 
by the Congress of the United States, in 1787, for the go- 
vernment of the territory north west of the river Ohio, con- 
tains the following article — " There shall be neither slavery 
nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than 
in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been 
duly convicted." This vast region was thus scrupulously' 
preserved from the evil; and the states of Ohio, Indiana, and 
Illinois formed out of it, make an integral part of that consi- 



SLAVE TRADE. 387 

dcrable and most prosperous division of our empire, into SECT. IX, 
which, hiippily, an Englishman may emigrate without " ex- v-<<"v'^s«*' 
posing his own charucler or the character of his children to 
the demoralizing effect of commanding slaves." 

18. The question of the existence of slavery is not, as I have 
intimated, — could not be, — put witliin the jurisdiction of the 
present government of the United States. The condition of 
things assuring, for a long time, to the part of the country ex- 
empt or soon to be exempt from the evil, a numerical majo- 
rity in the federal legislature, this domestic interest of the 
southern members of the Union, vital and pre-eminently de- 
licate in its nature, would have been placed at the mercy of 
men incapable, like the Edinburgh Reviewers, of understand- 
ing it thoroughly; liable to an undue bias resulting from the 
action of good principles; and who, whatever their general 
spirit of forbearance, considerateness of character, and warmth 
of political friendship, might, from ignorance and prejudice 
combined, through a mistaken patriotism and philanthropy, 
or in obedience to a sentimental clamor of their constituents, 
seconded by a generous zeal in their own breasts, hastily take 
a step which would sooner or later involve both master and 
slave, in the south, in one common ruin. 

As regards, then, the existence of slavery within the limits 
of the Union, the federal government has no responsibility 
such as that of tjie British parliament, in its omnipotence, 
with respect to the whole internal economy of the British pos- 
sessions. The eleven of these American states, in which 
slavery is now abolished, are not implicated in the demerits 
of the question. To break loose from the confederation, and 
thus to risk their own political independence, because the 
other members do not perform that which is impracticable; 
because these happen, without iheir own fault, to be afflicted 
with the curse of negro slavery; or to attempt to enforce by 
arms, an abolition; is what no sane person will consider as 
incumbent upon them, and what would hardly be advised by 
England, who neither coerces nor discards the West Indies; 
and who would not " give the law" to Spain, Portugal, or 
France, with respect to the slave trade — infinitely the more 
detestable crime and destructive evil—when those powers 
were at her beck. 

The eastern and middle states have not been backward in 
discharging any duty in the way of exhortation and aid, which 
their political and other ties with the slave-holding countries 
might seem to create. Their doctrine as to human rights is a'^ 



388 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PATiT I. broad, as sincerely adopted, and as loudly proclaimed, as that 
^'^''^^'^-' ot England; abolition societies abound in them, nlio do not 
yield in point of zeal to the African Insiitution, and have no 
comj)romise to make with any government.* The citizens of 
those states, in emigrating to the west, as they do constantly in 
great numbers, manifest the soundness of their feelings and 
principles on this subjert, by settling in preference, in the 
parts from which negro slavery is excluded. Hence the asto- 
nishing growth of the states of Ohio and Indiana, the first of 
which has outstripped, in advances of every kind, whatever 
the world had seen in the spontaneous formation of commu- 
nities. 

But, those members of the Union, of which I am now 
speaking, while they have inculcated Tvithout reserve, in the 
national councils, every truth, either abstract or practical, ap- 
pertaining to the question of our negro slavery, have not been 
blind to the just sentiments of their southern associates, who 
alone are accountable; nor have they overlooked, though they 
may not have always fully measured, the difficulties inherent in 
the situation of the latter. They, who have better opportunities 
of understanding it than the British reviewers, are far from 
thinking that it " affords no apology for the existence of sla- 
very." They see it in the same light, in this respect, as they 
see that of the West Indies, which the Reviewers have declar- 
ed a cr»mplete justification: for, though the negroes in our 
slave-holding states are not near so numerous in the propor- 
tion to the whites, as in the West Indies; and though, from 
the superiority of their condition, they are better prepared for 
freedom, yet they are in sufficient number to assure, in the 
event of insurrection, the most horrible disasters, before they 
could be subdued, with the earliest possible aid from the other 
states; and, they are slill, from inevitable causes, far from 
the point of being prepared to exist here, out of the bonds of 
slavery, with advantage to themselves, or safety to the whites. 

19. Before the American revolution, the British policy of 
multiplying their numbers by importations from Africa, closed 
the door against an attempt to qualify them, by moral and po- 
litical instruction, for that state. Such an attempt would ap- 
pear to have been equally impracticable, in the course of the 
revolutionary war, if we look only to the engrossing avoca- 

* Seethe writings of Dr. Thorpe for an explanation of this inuendo. 
He roundly charges Mr. Wilberforce and the Institution, with playinp- 
into the hands of the ministry. 



SLAVE TRADE. 



389 



tionsof tlie struggle, and to the belligerent system of the mo- SECT.ix. 
ther country. But it was so then, and has been ever since, ^•^"^^■'^•-' 
from other causes; more obviously, as the numbers of the 
blacks increased. An effectual training of the kind is incom- 
patible with their very being as slaves, and with the nature of 
the toil incident to their situation. It presupposes their eman- 
cipation, or such a modification of their existence as would 
be equivalent, in reference to their value as property, or to 
the danger threatened by their exemption from restraint. The 
doctrine so long popular and pursued in England, and main- 
tained openly by some of her most distinguished statesmen,* 
that the labouring classes should not be enlightened, lest they 
might become unwilling to perform the necessary drudgery of 
their station in life, and prone to rise against the monarchical 
scheme of social order, was not, perhaps, in her case, altoge- 
ther without foundation as to tlie latter topic of apprehension. 
Now, though the very reverse is the soundest policy for us, 
with our ijistitutions, as respects the whites, that doctrine, if 
the right of the southern American to consult his own safety 
and the ultimate happiness of his slaves, be admitted, is un- 
questionably just in relation to the body of the southern ne- 
groes. You could not attempt to improve and fashion their 
minds upon a general system, so far as to make them capgible 
of freedom in the mass and apart, without exposing yourself, 
even in the process, or in proportion as they began to under- 
stand and value their rights, to feel (he abjection of their 
position and employment, calculate their strength, and be fit 
for intelligent concert — to formidable combinations among 
them, for extricating themselves from their grovelling and se- 
vere labours at once, and for gaining, not merely an equality 
in the state, but an ascendancy in all respects. The difference 
of race and colour would render such aspirations in them, 
much more certain, prompt, and active, than in the case of a 
body of villeins of the same colour and blood with yourselves, 
whom you might undertake to prepare for self-government. 
The Duke of Wellington, in the late debate on Catholic 
emancipation in the British House of Peers, expressed his 
belief that the Catholics of Ireland, if relieved from their 
disabilities, would endeavour to put down the reformed reli- 
gion, and this because of the feelings which must accompany 
the recollection, that that religion had been established in their 
country by the sword. What consequences, then, might we 
not expect in the case of our slaves, from the sense of recent 

* See page 69, Sect. ii. 



390 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. sulTtring and degradation, and from the feelings incident to 
***'~^'"^*-^ the estrangement anci insulation growing out of the indelible 
distinctions of nature? 

I know of but one mode of correcting those feelings and 
)ireventing alienation, hostility, and civil war; of making the 
experiment of general instruction and emancipation with any 
degree of safety. We must assure the blacks of a perfect 
equality in all points with ourselves; w^e must labour to in- 
corporate them with us, so that we shall become of one flesh 
and blood, and of one political family! It is doubtful even 
whether we could succeed in this point, so gregarious are they 
in their habits, and so strong in their national sympathy. No 
sublime philanthropist of Europe has, however, as yet, in his 
reveries of the impiety of political distinc(ions founded upon 
the colour of the body, or in his lamentations over our injustice 
to (he blacks, exacted from us openly this hopeful amalgama- 
tion. It would, no doubt, suit admirably the views of our 
friends in England, who would then have full scope for plea- 
sant comparisons between (he American and English intellect, 
and the American and English complexion.* 

I could suggest another consideration, alone sufficient to 
have deterred our southern states from hazarding, since our 
revolution, the measure of a general abolition of negro slavery, 
accompanied with the continuance of the negroes within their 
limits. It would have put those states especially, and this 
federal union, at the mercy of Great Britain. The facility 
of tampering with the blacks, and of exciting them to insur- 
rection, would have been increased for her, incalculably, in 
their new condition, in time of war. l>et her conduct on this 
head during the revolutionary struggle, and in our late contest, 
in relation both to the Indians and negroes, determine the 
point whether she would not have availed herself of the op- 
portunity. 

On the subject of the abolition of tlie negro slavery of the 
south, Judge Tucker, whom I have, already cited, has made 
some remarks which cannot fail to have great weight with 
every dispassionate and candid mind. 

" It is unjust," he says, " to censure the present generation 
for the existence of slavery in this country, for I think it un- 
questionably true, that a very large proportion of our fellow- 
citizens lament that as a misfortune, which is imputed to them 

* See the Quarterly Review of May, 1819, on the point of com- 
plexion, " The white men, women, and children, are all sallow in 
America," &c. 



SLAVE TRADE. 391 

as a reproach; it being evident that, antecedent to the revolution, sect ix. 
no exertion to abolish, or even to check the progress of slavery, ^.^~v-^v^ 
could have received (he smallest countenance from the crown, 
without whose assent the united wishes and exertions of every 
individual here, would have been wholly fruitless and ineffec- 
tual: it is, perhaps, also demonstrable, that at no period since 
the revolution, could the abolition of slavery in the southern 
slates have been safely undertaken, until the foundations of 
our newly established governments had been found capable of 
supporting the fabric itself, under any shock, which so ardu- 
ous an attempt might have produced." 

" The acrimony of the censures cast upon us must abate, 
at least in the breasts of the candid, when they consider the 
difficulties attendant on any plan fur the abolition of slaver}', 
in a country where so large a proportion of the inhabitants 
are slaves, and where a still larger proportion of the cultiva- 
tors of the earth are of that description. The extirpation of 
slavery from the United States is a task equally momentous 
and arduous. Human prudence forbids that we should pre- 
cipitately engage in a work of such hazard as a general and 
simultaneous emancipation. The mind of man is in some 
measure to be formed for his future condition. The early im- 
pressions of obedience and submission, which slaves have re- 
ceived among us, and the no less habitual arrogance and as- 
sumption of superiority among the whites, contribute equally 
to unfit the former hr freedom, and the latter for equality. To 
expel them all at once from the United States would, in fact, 
be to devote them only to a lingering death, by famine, by 
disease, and other accumulated miseries. To retain them 
among us, would be nothing more than to throw so many of 
the human race upon the earth, without the means of subsist- 
ence; they would soon become idle, profligate, and miserable. 
They would be unfit for their new condition, and unwilling to 
return to their former laborious course." 

These observations were published in 1803; but they are 
equally applicable to the succeeding period. Our foreign re- 
lations were always such in the interval between the com- 
mencement of the late war with England and the year just 
mentioned, as to give an aspect of extreme danger to imme- 
diate abolition; and there was no room for the question during 
the continuance of the war. The difficulties of the case in- 
creased, indeed, with the great increase of the negroes, in- 
dependently of our general political embarrassments, both 
internal and external, sufficient to absorb our care and fa 
culties. 



392 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. It was by gradual, voluntary enfranchisement, not by iegis- 
•'-^'v-^ lative aboliiion, that an end was put to the villeinage of Eng- 
land, a bondage as complete and degrading as thai of our ne- 
groes, and which lasted until the reign of Elizabeth. But the 
villein, when emancipated, being of the same race, colour, and 
general character wiih the master, was assimilated and con- 
ciliated at once; intermarriage neither debased the blood, nor 
destroyed the identity, of the naiion; but added (o its strength 
and security. The gradual emancipation of the negroes of 
our southern states, if we supposed them to remain, would, 
in the end, produce the same inadmissible condition of things 
as the immediate, — a two-fold, or a motley nation; a perpetual, 
wasting strife, or a degeneracy from the European standard of 
excellence, both as to body and mind. As far as it has been 
tried, it has inspired no confidence, whether as regards the 
happiness of the blacks, or the security of the whites. Vir- 
ginia took advantage of her independence to authorize manu- 
mission, which the policy of the mother country discounte- 
nanced. Judge Tucker calculates that upwards often thousand 
obtained freedom in Virginia in this way, in the interval be- 
tween 1782, when she passed her law, and the year 1791. 
In 1810, according to the census, the number of her free 
negroes amounted to thirty thousand five hundred and seventy. 
In Maryland, there were forty thousand; the increase having 
been near twenty-six thousand since 1790. In the states south 
of Virginia, this class was not so numerous, but yet not incon- 
siderable. We find, by Dr. Scybert's tables, that the free 
negroes and mulattoes increased 185.05 per centum, from 
1790 to 1800; and from 1790 to 1810, 313.45. This ex- 
traordinary increase he ascribes to emancipations of slaves by 
their masters. Thus the experiment has been ample; and now 
let us see what is the result in the slave-holding states. It is 
fully given in the following representations which come from 
the pen of a politician well known, and most deservedly and 
highly respected, in Europe. 

" You may manumit a slave, but you cannot make him a 
white man. He still remains a negro or a mulatto. The 
mark and the recollection of his origin and former state still 
adhere to him; the feelings produced by that condition, in his 
own mind and in the minds of the whites, still exist; he is 
associated by his colour, and by these recollections and feel- 
ings, with the class of slaves; and a barrier is thus raised be- 
tween him and the whites, that is, between him and the free 
class, which he can never hope to transcend. The authority 
of the master being removed, and its place not being supplied 



SLAVE TRADE. 



393 



by moral restraints or incitements, he lives in idleness, and SECT. IX. 
probably in vice, and obtains a precarious support by begging ^-^^v^tei^ 
or theft. If he should avoid those extremes, and follow some 
regular course of industry, still the habits of thoughtless im- 
providence which he contracted while a slave himself, or has 
caught from the slaves among whom he is forced to live, who 
of necessity are his companions and associates, prevent him 
from making any permanent provision for his support, by pru- 
dent foresight and econon)y; and in case of sickness, or of 
bodily disability from any other cause, send him to live as a 
pauper, at the expense of the community." 

" But it is not in themselves merely that the free people of 
colour are a nuisance and burden. They contribute greatly 
to the corruption of the slaves, and to aggravate the evils of 
their condition, by rendering them idle, discontented, and dis- 
obedient This also arises from the necessity under which the 
free blacks are, of remaining incorporated with the slaves, of 
associating habitually with them, and forming part of the 
same class in society. The slave seeing his free companion 
live in idleness, or subsist, hoAvever scantily or precariously, 
by occasional and desultory employment, is apt to grow dis- 
contented with his own condition, and to regard as tyranny 
and injustice the authority which compels him to labour. 
Hence he is strongly incited to elude this authority by neglect- 
ing his work as much as possible; to withdraw himself from 
it altogether by flight, and sometimes to attempt direct resist- 
ance. This provokes or impels the master to a severity which 
would not otherwise be thought necessary; and that severity, 
by rendering the slave still more discontented with his condi- 
tion, and more hostile toward his master, by adding the senti- 
ments of resentment and revenge to his original dissatisfac- 
tion, often renders him more idle and worthlt^ss, and thus in- 
duces the real or supposed necessity of still greater harshness 
on the part of the master. Such is the tendency of thai com- 
parison which the slave cannot easily avoid making, between 
his own situation and that of the free people of his own colour, 
who are his companions, and in every thing except exemption 
from the authority of a master, his equals: whose condition, 
though often much worse than his own, naturally appears bet- 
ter to him; and being continually under his observation, and 
in close contact with his feelings, is apt to chofe, goad, and 
irritate him incessantly. This effict indeed is not always pro- 
duced, but such is the tendency of this state of things; and it 
operates more extensively, and with greater force, than is 
commonly supposed." 
Vol. I.— 3 D 



394 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 



PART I. " iJut this effect, injurious as it must be to the character 
'^■^"^""^^ and conduct of the slaves, and consequently to their comfort 
and happiness, is far from being the worst that is produced by 
the existence of free blacks among us; a majority of the free 
blacks, as we have seen, are, and must be an idle, worth- 
less, and thievish race. It is with this part of them that the 
slaves will necessarily associate, the most frequently and the 
most intimately. Free blacks of the better class, who gain a 
comfortable subsistence by regular industry, keep as much as 
possible aloof from the slaves, to whom in general they regard 
themselves as in some degree superior. Their association is 
confined, as much as possible, to the better and more respect- 
able class of slaves. But the idle and disorderly free blacks 
naturally seek the society of such slaves as are disposed to be 
idle and disorderly too; whom they encourage to be more and 
more so, by their example, their conversation, and the shelter 
and means which they furnish. They encourage the slaves to 
theft, because they partake in its fruits. They receive, secrete, 
and dispose of the stolen goods; a part, and probably much 
the largest part, of which they often receive, as a reward for 
their services. They furnish places of meeting and hiding 
places in their houses, for the idle and the vicious slaves; 
whose idleness and vice are thus increased and rendered more 
contagious. These hiding places and places of meeting are 
so many traps and snares, for the young and thoughtless slaves, 
who have not yet become vicious; so many schools in which 
Ihey are taught, by precept and example, idleness, lying, de- 
bauchery, drunkenness, and theft. The consequence of all 
this is very easily seen, and I am sure is severely felt in all 
places, where free people of colour exist in considerable num- 
bers."* 

The experience of the states north and east of the Susque- 
hannah, with regard to this class of persons, is not, on the 
whole, much more encouraging. The number of respectable 
individuals is considerably greater indeed, but the character 
of the mass nearly the same. Nor can it be urged that 
they are debarred here, access to the ordinary means of moral 
and intellectual regeneration. On the contrary, schools are 
established for them; they are aided in procuring the conve- 
niences for religious instruction and divine worship; they are 
united in societies adapted to produce self-respect, and men- 
tal activity; exemplary attention is paid, in numerous in- 



* Letter of Robert Goodloe Harper, Esq. to the Secretary of the 
.\merican Colonization Society. August 20tli, 1817. 



SLAVE TRADE. 395 

stances, to the regulation of their habits and principles. They SECT.ix. 
have every facility which is enjoyed by the labouring classes ^.^'"v^**^ 
among the whites, of acquiring a plain education, and a com- 
fortable subsistence, and of making provision for their chil- 
dren. They have the same legal security in person and pro- 
perty, and generally, the same political rights as the rest of 
the community. 

In the slave-holding states, they do, indeed, labour under 
civil incapacities ; and the policy of denying them the 
higher privileges of citizenship, is imperative. We have felt 
the inconvenience of naturalized Europeans exercising those 
privileges in distinct bodies, collected and animated by na- 
tional feeling; the risk of the African race voting and legis- 
lating with the esprit de corps^ is too serious to be incurred, 
even where all of the race might be free, provided they should 
be at all numerous; and to incur it would be madness, where 
a considerable number of them should, as slaves, remain to be 
irritated and goaded to revolt, by the invidiousness of the ex- 
ample, and the inevitable conspiracy of the others for the uni- 
versal release of their brethren. If we suppose that the mul- 
titude of free blacks whom Virginia, for instance, has now in 
her bosom, would exercise the privileges of citizenship, were 
these granted to them; and if we then assume the natural 
consequences, the elevation of some of their number to the 
legislature, and a concert of views and action among the whole, 
we must see that she would have to prepare herself at once 
for the alternative of a general extinction of her negro sla- 
very, whatever might be the catastrophe; or of the establish- 
ment of a restraining code and police which, if it proved 
effectual to prevent that danger, must aggravate the condition 
of the slave, and defer the period at which his emancipation 
might otherwise take place. " The experiment, so far as it 
has been already made among us," says Judge Tucker, 
" proves that the emancipated blacks are not ambitious of 
civil rights. To prevent the generation of such an ambition, 
appears necessary; for if it should ever rear its head, its par- 
tizans, as well as its opponents, will be enlisted by nature her- 
self, and always ranged against each other." 

20. The complaints which the British travellers and 
reviewers have made of the unjust disfranchisement of the 
free blacks, have then no foundation in fact, as regards the 
eastern states; nor in sound speculation, in reference to the 
southern. The disfranchisement which exists in the latter, 
cannot be said to be unjust, if injustice in the business of life, 



396 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. be not a mere abstraction, and have any thing to do with the 
^->"^'-^ consideration of self-preservation, and the \velf\ire of (he ma- 
jority. All qualifications of property in the matter of election 
and legislation would be unjust^ and the doctrine of universal 
siitTrage, which the Edinburgh Ri^view has so stoutly com- 
bated, the only true one, if the above mentioned complaints 
were admissible. 

With what an ill grace does reproach on the subject of 
disfranchisement, come from an Englishman! Oiie fourth of 
the whole united kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland — 
four-fifths of the population of Ireland separately — are inca- 
pable of sitting in Parliament, and of holding various civil and 
military stations. The motive for continuing this system of 
exclusion is avowed to be expediency. A large portion of the 
most intelligent politicians of Great Britain deny the fact 
of the alleged expediency; and surely, in the case of (he 
Catholics of England, a small body, confessedly qualified in 
point of understanding, morals, property, tried loyalty; there 
could be no practical inconvenience, as there is not even pre- 
tended to be the least direct danger, in admitting them to all 
the benefits of the British constitution; except only that their 
admission might render the Catholics of Ireland more earnest 
and importunate in seeking the same level. The case of the 
latter even, which wears a more plausible air as to expediency, 
is, in this respect, in no degree so strong as that of the negroes 
in our southern states, and infinitely beyond it in point of 
practical hardship and moral deformity.* England disfran- 
chises, not a race of men of a different complexion from her 
own, and of inveterate heterogeneity; degraded, in the gene- 
ral estimation of the European race, and who had been forced 
upon her hands by another country; insensible to the value 
of political rights, and incompetent to exercise them benefi- 
cially; but a people in whose favour all the natural sympa- 
thies, and most endearing natural affinities plead to her heart; 
whom she and all the civilized world acknowledge to be their 
equals in the choicest endowments of mind and body; whose 
country she invaded and whose independence she crushed; 
among whom she established by the sword that reformed re- 
ligion, the dissent from which is the pretext for their disfran- 
chisement; to whom she owes a boundless retribution for ages 
of acknowledged misgovernment and oppression, and gratitude 
for the most important services and aids rendered to her in 
every branch of her public business. 

* See Note V. 



SLAVE TRADE. 397 

21. Nothing can be more false than the representations of sect. ix. 
the English travellers concerning the treaUnent of the free v^»'vs»/ 
blacks by the whites in the middle and eastern states. It is 
not true that they are " excluded from the places of public 
worship frequented by the whiles;" that " the most degraded 
white will not walk or eai with a negro;" or that they are 
" practically slaves."* Their situation as hired domestics, 
mechanics, or general labourers, is the same in all respects as 
that of the whites of the same description; they are fed and 
paid as well; equally exempt from personal violence, and free 
to change their occupation or their employer. They approach 
us as familiarly as persons of the correspondent class in England 
approach their superiors in rank and wealth; and, in general, 
betray much less servility in their tone and carriage. They 
do not make part of our society, indeed; they are not invited 
to our tables; they do not marry into our families; nor would 
they, were they of our own colour, with no higher claims 
than they possess, on the score of calling, education, intelli- 
gence, and wealth. I confess that whatever claims they 
might possess in these or other respects, those are advantages 
from which they would be excluded; there must remain, in 
any case, a broad line of demarcation, not viewed as an incon- 
venience by them, but indispensable for our feelings and inte- 
rests. Nature and accident combine to make it impassable. 
Their colour is a perpetual memento of their servile origin, 
and a double disgust is thus created. We will not, and 
ought not, expose ourselves to lose our identity as it were; to 
be stained in our blood, and disparaged in our relation of 
being towards the stock of our forefathers in Europe. This 
may be called prejudice; but it is one which no reasoning 
can overcome, and which we cannot wish to see extinguished. 
We are sure that it would prevail in an equal degree with 
any nation of Europe who might be circumstanced like our- 
selves; we do not find it so gross in itself, or so hurtful and 
unjust in its operation, as those of an analogous cast which we 
see prevailing in England. " Men of irue speculation," says 
Mr. Burke, " instead of exploding general prejudices, employ 
their sagacity to discover the lalent wisdom which prevails in 
them. If they find what they seek, they think it more wise 
to continue ihe prejudice, with the reason involved, than to 
cast away the coat of prejudice, and leave nothing but the 
naked reason." 

* Tliese are the allegations ot'Fearon ; worthy of notice only so far 
as they have been employed as texts by the Reviewers. See Note W. 



398 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. 22. The unforfunate condition and character of the free 
■-,-F-v-«ito^ bl?ciis generally, are not imputable to the whites; but to the 
exisleiict itself of negro slavery among us, and to the circum* 
stance of a distinctive colour. The first is the work of Eng- 
land; ihe other of nature. As the case is, we need not be sur- 
prised, nor can we much lament, that some of the southern 
slates have massed laws to discourage manumission The 
enactment of such laws proves tbat the practice prevailed, or 
was likely to prevail, notwithstanding the injuriousness of the 
effects. We know that many thousands of the planters of the 
old states in ihe south, are restrained, not by the laws, but by 
a tenderness and sense of duty to the negroes themselves, and 
to the commonwealth. There are fevv Americans capable of 
reasoning calmly and from experience, on this subject, who do 
not concur, in reference to the southern states at least, in the 
following sentiments of the enlightened and benevolent en- 
quirer, whose accurate representation of the condition of the 
free blacks I have quoted above. 

" The considerations staled in the first part of this letter, 
have long since produced a thorough conviction in my mind, 
that the existence of a class of free people of colour. in this 
country is highly injurious, to the whites, the slaves, and the 
free people of colour themselves: consequently, that all eman- 
cipation, to however small an extent, which permits the per- 
sons emancipated to remain in this country, is an evil, which 
must increase with the increase of the operation, and would 
become altogether intolerable, if extended to the whole, or 
even to a very large part, of the black population. I am, 
therefore, strongly opposed to emancipation, in every shape 
and degree, unless accompanied by colonization." 

Colonization is, in fact, the only reliance in this great ques- 
tion. Without it, no plan of abolition can be effectual for 
the security of the whites, or the good of the blacks; since 
the permanence of the latter, free or enslaved, within the 
abode, or the neighbourhood, of the former, is the main dan- 
ger. Colonization is, no doubt, itself attended with appalling 
difficulties. The aspect of these difficulties prevented the 
legislature of Virginia from adopting, at an early period, a bill, 
prepared by a committee, for gradual emancipation in tbat 
state. It was thought, and not without reason, that to plant 
a nation of negroes in the American territory, would be to lay 
the foundation of intestine wars which could terminate only 
in their extirpation or final expulsion; that to assign them a 
country beyond the settlements of the whites, would be to put 
them on a forlorn hope against the Indians. The expense of 



SLAVE TRADE. 



399 



their transportation and establishment presented itself, also, as SECT. IX, 
an obstacle little short of insurmountable.* ^^.^•v-^*^ 

The expedient of transplanting the free blacks to the coast 
of Africa; of opening there a receptacle for our black popula- 
tion at large; occurred to the Virginia legislature in the be- 
ginning of the present century. At the solici'.ation of that 
body, the federal government endeavoured, in 1802, through 
Mr. King, the Amt^rican minister in London, to negotiate with 
the Sierra Leone Company, for the admission of the American 
blacks into their colony. But the applica'ion did not succeed; 
and the same fate attended a similar attempt, which was made 
with Portugal, to obtain an establishment for them within her 
South American dominions. 

While the British slave trade continued, no hope could be 
entertained of the prosperity of such an establishment on the 
coast of Africa. "To account," said the Edinburgh Review, 
in I8t)5, " for the failure of the Sierra Leone plan, it is quite 
sufficient to reflect, that it was undertaken in 1791, on the 
supposition then so natural, of the slave trade being about to 
cease; — that, instead of this expectation being realized, the 
traffic in question increased daily and hourly in growth; that 
the company in vain besought Parliament to check the trade, 
at least in the narrow district where the colony was planted." 
In sending our negroes thither, we should only have been fur- 
nishing aliment for that insatiable passion which occasioned 
the introduction of the race into our own country. Constantly 
expecting a rupture with Great Britain, or actually engaged' 
in hostilities with her, from the period of her abolition of the 
slave trade, it is only of late that we could again look to the 
coast of Africa. The project of making a settlement in that 
quarter, for the purpose of gradually restoring our black popu- 
lation to their native region, and thus extirpating the slavery 
which we detest, and fear, has been revived. As soon after 
the conclusion of the peace in 1815, as our political circum- 
stances would permit, a society, styled the American Coloni- 
zation Society, was formed in the south, on the most liberal 
plan, and under the most distinguished auspices. It enjoys the 
particular patronage of the legislature of Virginia; has the 
countenance and aid of the federal government; and appears 
to be viewed with an eye of favour by the slave-holding 
states. Auxiliary societies have been organized in different 
parts of the country, and will, probably, multiply fast, and 
excite every where an interest in the important object, which 

* Tucker's Notes on Blackstone. 



400 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. will greatly facilitate its success. The principal society has 
^'■^^~>f^>^ already caused the western coast of Africa to be explored, and 
is sanguine as to the practicability of the plan of settlement 
in some district of that coast. I must confess that I have 
no hope of its success. The British government, whatever 
may be its professions, will not allow any establishment to 
thrive and be perpetuated, which may interfere with its par- 
ticular views in that direction. As long, moreover, as the 
slave trade is prosecuted in its present frightful extent, or, in- 
deed, until it shall be contracted within very narrow limits, 
no colony which we may form, can be prevented from be- 
coming, either its prey, or one of its factories. The acting 
attorney-general of Sierra Leone declared in 1812, on the 
trial of certain persons for an infraction of the British aboli- 
tion laws, that the town itself, Sierra Leone, was "the heart 
from which all the arteries and veins of the slave-trarling sys- 
tem had for years been animated and supplied."* The direc- 
tors of the African Institution, in their answers to the queries 
of Lord Castlereagh, already cited, hold the following lan- 
guage. " Sierra Leone, and iis immediaie neighbourhood, 
may be considered as the only part of the African coast where 
plans of improvement can be pursued without immediately 
encountering the malignant influence of the slave trade. It is 
almost necessary, therefore, to confine within that sj)here, at 
least for the present, any direct < fforls made for the civilization 
and improvement of Africa. Even the establishment formed 
in the Rio Pongas, for the instruction of the natives, it is fear- 
ed, must be withdrawn, in consequence of the revival of the 
slave trade." 

Though, from the commercial jealousy of Great Britain, 
the prevalence of the slave trade, or our liability to be involved 
in wars with the European nations, which would interrupt 
our communication with Africa, we should be obliged to with- 
draw our aims from that continent, the plan of colonization 
may, I think, still be pursued on our own, with equal conve- 
nience and less risk of final miscarriage. I will not undertake 
to point out the spot for its execution; this does not belong to 
my subject; but there cannot be wanting a spot within our 
reach, free from all invincible objections. The object is of 
infinite importance; it calls for the earnest attention of the 
whole nation, and the unanimous agency of the federal 



* See Dr. Thorpe's View of the present increase of the Slave 
Trade, p. 71, 



SLAVE TRADE, 401 

government. "The alarming danger," says General Harper,* SECT.IX, 
" of cherishing in our bosom a distinct nation, which can ne- v^^v-^** 
ver become incorporated with us, while it rapidly increases 
in numbers; a nation which must ever be hostile to us, from 
feeling and interest; the danger of such a nation in our bosom, 
need not be pointed out to any reflecting mind. It speaks not 
only to our understanding, but to our very senses." 

23. In defiance of the lessons of history and of the true 
philosophy of the human mind, the British writers have in- 
sisted, that freedom must be altogether an empty name in the 
country where domestic slavery is established. Their doc- 
trine would deprive Greece and Rome of the distinction, upon 
which the admiration of mankind for those republics has 
been chiefly built. Freedom would be just born, as it were, 
in the world. " In every age and country," says Hallam, in 
his History of the Middle Ages, " until times comparatively 
recent, personal servitude appears to have been the lot of a 
large, perhaps the greater portion of our species. We lose a 
good deal of our sympathy with the spirit of freedom in 
Greece and Rome, when the importunate recollection occurs 
to us, of the tasks which might be enjoined, and the punish- 
ments which might be inflicted, without control either of law 
or opinion, by the keenest patriot of the Comitia, or the 
Council of Five Thousand. A similar, though less powerful 
feeling, will often force itself on the mind, when we read the 
history of the middle ages." 

The institution of slavery in the ancient republics was at- 
tended with every circumstance which might appear incom- 
patible with the prevalence of true liberty, or of the moral and 
political virtues of the highest class. f But who can deny to 
Greece and Rome an ample share of those honours? "We 
feel," says Ferguson, in his Essay on the History of Civil 

* Letter to the American Colonization Society. 

■\ "In the ancient states," says the Scottish philosopher, Millar, in 
his Origin of Ranks, "so celebrated upon account of theirfree govern- 
ment, the bulk of their mechanics and labouring people were denied 
the common privileges of men, and treated upon the footing of inferior 
animals. In proportion to the opulence and refinement of those nations, 
tiie number of their slaves was increased, and the grievances to which 
they were subjected became the more intolerable." 

" Allowing five persons to each family, the Athenian slaves exceeded 
the freemen in the proportion of between two and three to one. In 
the most flourishing periods of Rome, when luxury was carried to so 
amazing a pitch, the proportion of the inhabitants reduced into .servi- 
tude was in all probabilitv t^reatfr." 

Vol. I.— 3 E 



402 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. Society, " the injustice of the institution of slavery at Sparta. 
•-•'"^'"^ We suffer for the helot; but we think only of the superior or- 
der of men in (his state, when we atiend to that elevation and 
magnanimity of spirit, for which danger had no terror, interest 
no means to corrupt; when we consider them as friends or as 
citizens, we are apt to forget, like themselves, thai slaves have 
a title to be treated like men." 

Hallam, in the work which I have quoted above, has con- 
tended for the freedom of the English constitution during the 
days of English villeinage, and ascribed to the commons of 
those days a proud sense and (enaciousness of equality in civil 
rights. In what manner ihe villeins were treated, and in what 
light viewed, will be understood from the following passage of 
this author. 

"By a very harsh statute in the reign of Richard II. no 
servant or labourer could depart, even at the expiration of his 
service, from the hundred in which he lived, without permis- 
sion under the king's seal; nor might any one who had been 
bred to husbandry, till twelve years old, exercise any other 
calling. A few years afterwards, the commons petitioned 
that villeins might not put their children to school, in order to 
advance thesii by the church; 'and this for the honour of all 
the freemen of the kingdom.' In the same parliament they 
complained, that villeins fly to cities and boroughs where their 
masters cannot recover them, and prayed that the lords might 
seize their villeins in such places, without regard to the fran- 
chises thereof."* 

If the traits which I have cited in the second section of this 
volume, from the early political history of the southern states, 
were not enough to convince the mother country of the compa- 
tibility of the love and possession of the broadest civil liberty, 
with the institution of domestic servitude, the part which they 
took as colonies in asserting and maintaining the rights of 
America against her scheme of usurpation, ought to have dis- 
pelled all her doubts on the subject. One of her statesmen, 
at least, an adept in the science of human nature, did not 
remain in error; but placed the question before her in the 
just and full light, as an admonition against perseverance in 
her perilous career. It is strange that it should be necessary 
to repeat, for the instruction of some of her most witted wri- 
ters of the present day, the following passage of Burke's speech 
on the conciliation with America. 

" There is a circumstance attending these southern Ameri- 

* Vol. ii. c. viii. 



SLAVE TRADE. 403 

can colonies, which makes the spirit of liberty still more high SECT.IX. 
and haughiy there than in those to the northward. It is that, ^^"v-^ 
in Virginirt and the Carolinas, they have a vast multitude of 
slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those 
who are free, are by far the most proud and jealous of their 
freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a 
kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there, that freedom, 
as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad 
and general as the air, may be united with much abject toilj 
with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude, liberty 
looks, amongst them, like something that is more noble and 
liberal. I do not mean to commend the superior morality of 
this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it; 
but I cannot alter the nature of man. The fact is so; and these 
people of the southern colonies are much more strongly, and 
with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty 
than those of the northward. Such were all the ancient 
commonwealths; such were our Gothic ancestors; such in our 
days were the Poles, and such will be all masters of slaves, 
who are not slaves themselves. In such a people the haughti- 
ness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, forti- 
fies it, and renders it invincilde." 

All our experience in America, since the revolution, con- 
firms the opinion of the orator; or, at least, assures us, that 
the citizens of the slave-holding states understand quite as 
well, and cherish as fondly, the principles of republicanism, 
as those of the o(her members of our union. Bryan Edwards 
has indicated in the character and demeanour of the West 
Indians, what we find universal among our south and south- 
western brethren. " Of the character," says this author, 
" common to the white residents of the West Indies, it ap- 
pears to me that the leading feature is an independent spirit, 
and a display of conscious equality, throughout all ranks and 
conditions. The poorest white person seems to consider him- 
self nearly on a level with the richest, and, emboldened by 
this idea, approaches his employer with extended hand, and 
a freedom which, in the countries of Europe, is seldom dis- 
played by men in the lower orders of life towards their supe- 
riors. It is not difficult to trace the origin of this principle. 
It arises, without doubt, from the pre-eminence and distinction 
which are necessarily attached even to the complexion of a 
white man, in a country where the complexion, generally 
speaking, distinguishes freedom from slavery."* 

* History of the West Indies, ch. i. b. iv. 



404 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. I may apply in the same way the following; representations 
^'^"^'''^^ which Edwards makes in continuation. " Possibly too, the 
climate itself, by increasing sensibility, contributes to create 
an impatience of subordination. But, whatever may be the 
cause of this consciousness of self-importance in the West 
Indian character, the consequences resulting from it are, on 
the whole, beneficial. If it sometimes produces an ostenta- 
tious pride, and a ridiculous affectation of splendour, it more 
frequently awakens the laudable propensities of our nature — 
frankness, sociability, benevolence, and generosity. In no 
part of the globe is the virtue of hospifality more generally 
prevalent, than in the British sugar islands. The gates of 
the planter are always open to the reception of his guests. To 
be a stranger is of itself a sufficient introduction." 

24. There is some plausibility in the theory of the Edin- 
burgh Review concerning the effects of commanding slaves 
upon 'he heart and the morals. But it is not established by 
our experience, as true in the general. The native citizen 
of the slave-holding state displays, specifically, as much sen- 
sibility, justice, and stedfastness, in all tlie domestic and social 
relations, as the European, of whatever country. He is as 
Strongly influenced by the ties of kindred and friendship; as 
open to the impressions which attemper and refine our nature. 
He has had a large share in the formation and administration 
of our institutions and laws; in all the executive offices, civil 
and military; and we have never discovered in him any parti- 
cular proneness to tyranny or inhumanity; a torpid conscience, 
or an imperfect sense of equity. In none of the nobler vir- 
tues and qualities has he ever proved deficient, in the compa- 
rison with tbe individual born and fashioned among freemen 
alone. If there be any thing contradistinguishing in his man- 
ners and disposition, it is certainly not ferocity or even harsh- 
ness. The planter of our old southern states has always been 
rather remarkable for his urbanity and facility, as well as for 
the dignify and liberality of his sentiments. Morals, it is said, 
are more loose in the slave-holding states. If we admitted this 
to be the case, it would by no means follow that the institution 
of slavery is the principal cause of the relaxation. An original 
difference of religious institutions, and maxims of conduct; of 
soil and climate; of modes of livelihood and materials of 
traffic; of circumstances attending the connexion with the 
mother country; might give the same result. Domestic sla- 
very continues in Germany and the northern parts of Europe; 
it has disappeared from the southern; but the dissoluteness of 



SLAVE TRADE. 405 

these is notoriously greater. Hungary is more in the odour of sect. ix. 
sanctity than the kingdom of Naples. The institution in v.^'v^^,^ 
question is to be abhorred, on account of the violence which 
it offers to human rights, and the abjection to which it reduces 
human nature: a priori it would seem to exert a fatal influ- 
ence on the character of the master; but our experience at 
least, I repeat it, would not justify us in adopting the theory. 
When we investigate the dispositions and morals of the Eu- 
ropean nations, it is not with the " lowest and least" of them 
alone, but with the highest and greatest that we venture to 
compare the white population of our slave-holding states. It 
is not unknown to us, that in Russia the number of slaves 
held as property, and subject to absolute will, is sextuple that 
of our negroes:* That, in the other parts of Europe, where 
the institution of slavery does not exist, there are otiicr insti- 
iutions generating an hundred fold more vice, misery, and 
debasement, than we have ever witnessed in the same com- 
pass in America. 

25. The laws of the slave-holding stales do not furnish a 
criterion for the character of their present white population, 
or the condition of the slaves. Those laws were enacted, for 
the most part, in seasons of particular alarm, produced by 
attempts at insurrection; or when ihe black inhabitants were 
doubly formidable by reason of the greater proportion which 
they bore to the whites, in number, and of the savage state 
and unhappy mood in which they arrived from Africa. The 
real measure of danger was not understood but after long 
experience; and in the interval, the precautions taken, were 
naturally of the most jealous and rigorous aspect. That these 
have not been all repealed, or that some of them should be 
still enforced, is not inconsistent with an improved spirit of 
legislation; since the evils against which they were intended to 
guard are yet the subject of just apprehension. England in- 
undated South Carolina, for instance, with barbarians, and 
now reproaches her with the measures which she took for her 
security against their brute force. 

There is no Code JVoir which surpasses in atrocity that 



* See the Appendix to Storch's Course of Political Economy, St. 
Petersburg, 1815. This writer states, that in 1782, the number of 
male peasants, or serfs, of the crown, amounted to 4,675,000; that they 
could be hired out, sold, given away, &c. ; and the number of male 
slaves, the property of subjects, he estimates at 6,678,000; equally at. 
*he disposal of the masters. 



40G 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 



PARTI, part of the British statute book relating to Roman Cathoh'cs.* 
'*-^"^''^**-' What Englishman will allow us to make this, as it stood be- 
fore Sir George Saville's act, or even as it now stands, the 
index to British humanity and justice? Acts of proscription 
are still sulfered to remain in terrorein, ready for a barely pos- 
sible emergence. "The laws against the Catholics," said the 
Bishop of Worcester, in the House of Lords, (May 19th, 
1819,) " had hitherto been administered tenderly and sparing- 
ly; they would, doubtless, continue to be so administered, 
unless some event should occur to render their strict enforcement 
necessary.'''' 

Since the revolution, most of the southern codes have been 
softened in regard to the slave police; and the murder of a 
negro is now capital throughout our union, except in one 
state. I have already quoted the assertion of Dr. Dickson, 
that "the harshness of the slave laws is but little softened by 
the lenity of the general practice in the British sugar islands." 
The reverse of this is notoriously true of the American states. 
The patrol laws, for example, of South Carolina, whirh con- 
tain the most oppressive of her regulations, are rarely put in 
execution. In Virginia, the interdict laid, at the time of what 
is called Gabriel's insurrection, upon the assemblage of ne- 
groes, — a " seditious meetings bill," like that passed by the 
British parliament in 181 7,t — is wholly neglected. No re- 
straint in this respect is imposed upon them by their masters, 
except such as may be necessary for purposes of domestic or- 
der anil labour. 

Before our revolution, the negro slavery of this country was, 
as we have seen, acknowledged to be universally less severe 
than that of any other part of the world. It has undergone, 
since that event, a great and striking amelioration. To this 
fact, all who have witnessed and compared the former and 
present lot of the slaves of our southern states, bear the most 
confident testimony. What was once deemed a moderate 
treatment, would now be a rigid one; and the tolerated rigour 

* "Laws." says Mr- Burke, in his speech at Bristol, previous to the 
election, " were made in this kingdom against Papists as bloody as any 
of those which had been enacted by the Popish princes and states; 
and where those laws were not bloody, they were worse ; as they were 
slow, cruel, outrageous on our nature, and kept men alive, only to insult 
in their persons every one of the rights and feelings of humanity." 

■}• By the standing Riot Jict of England, not more than twelve per- 
sons are allowed to continue together, after it has been read by the 
magistrate. Lord Castlereagh said in Parliament in 1817, that "there 
was not on the statute book a law which had been more beneficial to 
the country." 



SLAVE TRADE. 407 

of the first period could find no countenance at the present. SECT.ix. 
The negro has gained nearly as much by our separation from v.^'^v'^^w^ 
Great Britain as the white. The causes of this undeniable 
fact are various and obvious. 

With the importation of the Africans, ceased much of the 
dread, which the slave population inspired, while it was con- 
tinually receiving large accessions of strangers. At this time 
by far the greater part of the slaves of the old states, have 
been born and brought up by the side of the whites. In pro- 
portion as the indigenous character predominated, the propen- 
sity on the one hand to shake off the yoke, and the mistrust on 
the other, which occasioned its aggravation, regularly di- 
minished. Another circumstance tended to render the slaves 
in a much less degree objects of terror, and to make room for 
the kindlier dispositions of our nature to operate; the whites 
came soon to exceed them considerably in number, from emi- 
gration added to natural increase. Brougham has speculated 
in his Colonial Policy, in conformity to the facts in our case. 
" There can be little doubt," he says, " that the fatal dis- 
proportion of the two classes, the great proportion of the im- 
ported negroes, and the cruel treatment of the slaves in gene- 
ral, would be all materially altered by any revolution that 
should separate the colonies from the parent state, while the 
more rigorous administration of an independent community, 
would lessen the danger arising from such a mixture of ne- 
groes, or such abuses of the slave system as might still re- 
main." 

Not only does the proportion which the slaves bear to the 
free part of the community, contribute to determine their con- 
dition, but, in general, the greater or smaller numbers in which 
they belong to individuals. The abolition of entails and the 
rule of primogeniture, together with the evaporation of those 
old prejudices which fettered parental affection in the testa- 
mentary distribution of estates, have, since the establishment 
of our independence, led to the subdivision of every kind of 
property, in the southern communities. The negroes, being 
more widely apportioned, exist in smaller bands, and are of 
course more under the immediate care and inspection of the 
masters, in whose eyes they must at the same time have, 
singly, more value. The interest of the master in the welfare 
of the slave is not to be urged as a full security against ill 
usage; but it cannot fail to have a considerable intluence; and 
it has been constantly increasing from the enhancement of 
the price of negroes, occasioned by the demand for their la- 
bour in the new states, and the insufficiency of the supplies 



408 NEGKO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. vvhich the illicit importation from Africa can furnish, riu 
'^^^^^>>i^ more abundant production of food, the increase of wealth 
with the planters, and more strictness of principle and regu- 
larity of habits, (for these too can be proved to be among the 
effects of the revolution,) have redounded likewise to the ad- 
vantage of the slaves. 

It is not to be doubted, but that the political discussions, 
which preceded our revolution, the spirit of the institutions 
which grew out of it, and the diffusion of education, excited 
a greater sensibility to human righis; a quicker sympathy 
with human sufferings; a more general liberality of sentiment; 
and a higher pride of character, in the slave-holding part of 
our population. Hence a new public opinion sprung up, re- 
quiring a system of lenity and generosity in the government 
and sustentatlon of the slaves; and repressive, not only of 
barbarity, but of habitual severity in any marked degree, 
and of what may be equivalent in its effects, habitual indif- 
ference and estrangement. These abuses have become dis- 
reputable; they expose the man who is guilty of them to the 
disdain and reprobation of his neighbours; and in this way 
are more efficaciously checked than they could be by any 
legislative enactments. The master who should deprive his 
negro of his peadium^ — the produce of his poultry house or 
his little garden; who should force him to work on holidays 
or at night; who should deny him the common recreations, or 
leave him without shelter or provision in his old age, would 
incur the aversion of the community, and raise obstacles to 
the advancement of his own interests and external aims. 

26. The American negro slavery is almost wholly free from 
two of the grievances which characterize that of the West 
Indies — under-feeding and over-working. With regard to the 
great article of food, the American negroes are, assuredly, 
better supplied than the free labourers of most parts of 
Europe. Flesh meat is not attainable for the latter in the 
same quantity which is commonly given to the first; it would 
seem, (on this head I refer to the quotations which I have 
made from the Quarterly Review,*) not to be attainable at all 
for the poorer classes of Great Britain and Ireland. In respect 
to clothing and lodging, the comparison would give nearly 
the same result. On the score of fuel, the want of which 
occasions so much suffering in particular counties of Great 
Britain, and, as to the point of labour, the advantage is greatly 

* See page 228 



SLAVE TRADE. 408 

en the side of the American negroes in general. I cannot, 9E€T. IX. 
here, enter into the details of the system, upon which they are ^.^»"v-^ 
worked on the southern plantations; but I can say of it, that 
it involves nothing like the same intensity, duration, or con- 
tinuity of exertion, which would appear to be indispensable 
in Great Britain, in almost all the lower walks of mechanical 
industry, for the mere support of animal life. The average 
number of hours of daily toil exceeds there by nearly one 
half that which is exacted under the system just mentioned. 
A few extracts from recent debates of Parliament will deter- 
mine the validity of this assertion. 

In the House of Commons, (April 29th, 1818,) "Mr. 
Peel said, in Manchester alone, 11,600 children were em- 
ployed in the cotton factories, and the average time of labour 
thirteen hours a day. Most of these poor children, after the 
thirteen hours of labour, were obliged to go to school to learn 
to write," 

" Sir Robert Peel said, it was proved that in Lancashire, 
children were employed fifteen hours a day, and after any 
stoppage, from five in the morning until ten in the evening, 
seventeen hours^ and this often for three weeks at a time. On 
Sunday they were employed from six in the morning until 
twelve in cleaning the machinery." 

"Mr. Peter Moore said, (May 13th, 1819,) in the town 
which he had the honour to represent, (Coventry,) there 
were five classes of manufacturers, each working ninety-six 
hours in the week, or sixteen hours in the day. The first of 
these classes gain, in return for their labour, ten shillings a 
week, or two pence halfpenny an hour, which is but a very 
trifling share of what they were formerly in the habit of ac- 
quiring. The second class gained ds. Gd. a week. The third 
2s. 9(f., which is labouring four hours for five farrhings. The 
two remaining classes receive 25. and Is. 6d. a week, which 
is working at the rate of seven and nine hours for a single 
halfpenny." 

"Mr. 'Mansfield said, (March 25th, 1819,) that he had at- 
tended a committee that day, before whom a case was pr(»ved 
of a great number of labourers, who, by working fifteen or 
sixteen hours a day, could not earn above seven shilling^i par 
week." 

The physical condition of the American negro is, on the 

whole, not comparatively alone, but positively good, and he 

is exempt from those racking anxieties — the exacerbations of 

despair, to which the English manufacturer and peasant are 

Vol. I.— 3 F 



410 



NEGRO SLAVERY AND 



PART I, subject in the pursuit of their pittance.* The old age of the 
'^■^'^^''""^^ negro, in Virginia and the Carolinas particularly, is by no 
means one of cheerlessness or destitution. He is not tasked 
beyond his strength; he is sure of nutriment; he remains in 
the midst of his comrades; and, in most cases, has a family 
about him with the feelings and attractions of legitimacy; for, 
the polygamy, and promiscuous intercourse between the sexes, 
which crown the abominations of West India slavery, are not 
common features in the North American. 

We have it upon the authority of the Quarterly Review, 
that the great body of the British people "work with the 
prospect of want and pauperism before their eyes as what 
must be their destiny at last;^'' that " in the road in which the 
English labourer must travel, the poor house is the last stage 
on the way to the grave,"! If we are entitled to form an 
opinion from the Parliamentary Reports, — no mean authority, 
— this final stage of the English labourer is worse than any 
stage in the career of the American negro. The "victim of 
American barbarity" finds in his "quarter" comforts which 
the tenant of the British poor house might envy, and can ne- 
ver hope to enjoy. 

From the minutes of evidence before the parliamentary com- 
mittee on the state of the poor, it would appear, that the treat- 
ment experienced in the receptacles provided for them, is 
wretched and barbarous almost beyond credibility. By way 
of exatnple, the witnesses stated that in one room 28 feet long 
by 15 wide, there were two and twenty persons sleeping; that 

* I appeal to the petitions presented to Parliament by bodies often 
and twenty thousand agriculturists and mannfacturers at a time. The 
fojiovvinp^ representation, made by Mr. Brougham in the House of Com- 
mons, may be taken as a specimen of tlieir condition. 

" Mr. Brougham observed that the weavers, in consequence of the 
reduction of their wages, were compelled first, to partfor their suste- 
nance M'ith all tlieir trifling property by piece-meal, from the little fur- 
niture of their cottages to the very bedding and clothes that used to 
cover them from the weather. They struggled on with hunger, and 
went to sleep at night-fall, upon the calculation that if they worked an 
hour or two later, they might indeed earn three halfpence more, one 
of which must be paid for a candle, but then the clear gain of a penny 
would be too dearly bought, and leave them less able to work the next 
day. To such a frightfid nicety of reckoning are human beings reduced, 
treating themselves like mere machines, and balancing the produce 
against the tear and wear, so as to obtain the maximum that their phy- 
sical powers can be made to yield! At length, however, they must 
succumb; the W'Orkhouse closes their dismal prospect; or, with a re- 
luctance that makes their lot a thousand times more pitiable, they sub- 
mit to take parish relief; and, to sustain life, part with tiie indepen- 
dent spirit, the best birliiright of an English peasant." 

t See page 287. 



SLAVE TRADE. 



411 



idiots lived promiscuotisly with the other paupers; that the sect. ix. 
fowls and chickens were kept in the pantries where the food '— =''~v-^i.^ 
for the poor was kept; that they were in general extremely ill 
clothed, &c. The parishes contracted with individuals for 
keeping their poor at so much a head, and made them thus 
victims of avaricious speculation. It was shown that one in- 
dividual farmed the poor of no less than forty parishes, re- 
ceiving six shillings a week for each pauper; and spending of 
course as little as possible of this stipend for the accommoda- 
tion of his guests. London had eighteen thousand poor in the 
different workhouses in England. I refer to the Report of 
the House of Commons on Mendicity, for a general picture 
of the condition of the paupers in those work-houses. 

" Your committee," says the Report, " cannot hesitate to 
suggest that there are not in the country a set of beings more 
immediately requiring the protection of the legislature than 
the persons in a state of lunacy and mendicity, a very large 
■proportion of whom are enlirely neglected by their friends and 
relations. If the treatment of those in the middling or in the 
lower classes of life, shut u{) in hospitals, private mad-houses, 
or parish work-houses, is looked at, your committee are per- 
suaded that a case cannot be found, where the necessity for a 
remedy is more urgent." 

The details of the Report recall to mind, but with features of 
ienfold patheticalness, the touching lament of the poet Crabbe: 

" Then too I own, it grieves me to behold 
Those evei' virtuous, helpless now and old, 
By all for care and industry appi'ov'd, 
For truth respected, and for temper lov'd ; 
And who, by sickness and misfortune try'd, 
Gave Want its worth and Poverty its pride : 
I own it grieves me to behold them sent 
From their old home ; 'tis pain, 'tis punishment, 
To leave each scene familiar, every face. 
For a new people and a stranger race ; 
For those who, sunk in sloth and dead to shame, 
From scenes of guilt with daring spirit came ; 
Men, just as guileless, at such manners start. 
And bless their God that time has fenc'd their heart, 
Confirm'd their virtue and expell'dthe fear 
Of vice in minds so simple and sincere. 

Here the good pauper, losing all the praise 
By worthy deeds acquir'd in better days. 
Breathes a few months, then to his chamber led. 
Expires while strangers prattle around his bed."* 

27. The religious instruction of the slaves cannot be said 
to be an object of immediate care with the majority, or any 

* See Note X. 



412 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. great proportion, of (he American masters; but they are iar 
'"'^^^"^^ from refusing them access to it, in any form. It is left at the 
option of the negroes to frequent the churches and meeting 
houses, which, in the country, have universally a compart- 
ment for their occupation. The old, or infirm, or those whose 
conduct has been exemplary, are indulged with horses to 
ride to seumons. They have, in numerous instances, houses 
of worship for their separate use, where individuals of their 
own number, empowered by the white elders, preach, and 
discharge the other functions of the ministry. Itinerant mis- 
sionaries of the gospel have formed congregations of them in 
almost every district; and though the Christian lecture cannot 
be otherwise than rare, and the attendance upon it loose, yet 
enough is done to leave a salutary impression, and to make it 
utterly inconsistent with the truth to say of them, what the 
Quarterly Review says, no doubt with great truth, of two-thirds 
of the lower order of people in all the large cities and towns of 
England, and of '' the greatest part of her manufacturing po- 
pulace, and her miners and colliers," — that they live as utterly 
ignora7it of the doctrines and duties of Christianity^ and are as 
errant and unconverted Pagans, as if they had existed in the 
wildest part of Jlfricay* 

South Carolina has had a great share of the obloquy of the 
British travellers, on this subject. Their outcry will not be si- 
lenced, but the friends of justice and humanity will be gratified, 
by the following facts which I extract from an official Report, 
dated the 14lh June, 1819, of a committee of the Board of 
Managers of the Bible Society of Charleston, respecting the 
progress and present state of Religion in South Carolina. 
" From the best information the committee have been able to 
obtain, they find that the Gospel is now preached to about six 
hundred and thirteen congregations of Protestant Christians; 
that (here are about two hundred and ninety-two ordained 
clergymen who labour amongst them, besides a considerable 
number of domestic missionaries, devoted and supported by 
each denomination, who dispense their labours to such of the 
people as remain destitute of an established ministry. From 
actual returns, and cautious estimates where such returns have 
not been obtained, it appears that in the state there are about 
46,000 Protestants who receive the holy communion of the 
Lord's supper. In the city of Charleston, upwards of one- 
fourth of the communicants are slaves or free people of colour: 
and it is supposed that in the other parts of the state, the 

*• See page 288. 



SLAVE TRADE. 413 

proportion of such communicants may be estimated at about sect. ix. 
one-eighth. In every church they are freely adndlled to attend v-^-^.^*^' 
on Divine service — in most of the churches distinct accommo- 
dations are provided for them, and the clergy in general make 
it a part of their pastoral care to devote frequent and stated 
seasons for the religious instruction of catechumen from 
amongst the black population." 

This train of ati'airs in South Carolina is somewhat more 
creditable than that in the British West Indies, where scarcely 
any thing has been done for the conversion of the negroes. If 
we did not see by the statements of the Quarterly Review 
and the parliamentary papers, to what a deplorable extent the 
initiation of the people of England into Christianity has been 
neglected,* we should find it ditficult to believe that her 
established church had, in the course of nearly two centu- 
ries, attempted nothing towards the regeneration of the mil- 
lions of heathens who have been held in bondage in her 
islands. To this effect, however, is the testimony of all the 
best authorities concerning the affairs of those islands. Mo- 
ravian missionaries alone had sought to introduce the light of 
the Gospel among a population requiring its lessons and con- 
solations, more, perhaps, than any other on earth. At length 
the late Bishop Porteus founded a " Society for the conversion 
of negro slaves," which has been nearly inoperative. With 
respect to the British planters themselves, it is asserted in a 
recent work entitled to full credit, that " there is not, and ne- 
ver was, either worship or instruction of any kind provided 
by them for their numerous slaves."! The number of ne- 
groes in the British West Indies, baptized and endoctrinated, 
bears no assignable proportion to those in the United States. 

28. The British philanthropists, in making their appeal in 
favour of the former, have seemed to consider every thing 
as gained, if only " the humblest and coarsest necessaries oj 
life, the protection of laic, and the assistance of labouring cattle, 
could be secured to them.| It is long since so niuch and more 
has been secured to the great majority of the North American 
negroes; and the irresistible proof offers itself in the increase 
of their numbers. The Edinburgh Reviewers would, with 
all their ingenuity, find it difficult to reconcile (he aspersions 

* See Note Y. 

■\ Letters on the West Indies, by James Walker, London, 1818 
Letter VI. 

+ Dickson's Mitigation of Slavery. Preface 



414 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. which they cast upon the American as the murderer and scour- 
^-*'^v-«»-' ger of slaves^ with the fact that, according to the rate of in- 
crease from 1790 to 1810, the number of years required for 
the duplication of our slave population is only 25.99, The 
allowance to be made on account of importations, would not 
extend this term to twenty-eight at the utmost, for the natu- 
ral increase. The population of Great Britain, as appears by 
auihentic documents, does not double in less than eiglUy years* 
Even in the most unheakhy districts of South Carolina, where 
rice is cultivated, and the labour of the negroes comparatively 
severe, they do not diminish in numbers. A benevolent prac- 
tice prevails among some of the rice planters, of paying to the 
overseers, in addition to their regular emoluments, a certain 
sum per head (usually ten dollars) for the annual increase; 
and it has proved no insignificant source of revenue to the 
latter. 

" The increase of the American slaves and people of co- 
lour," says the Quarterly Review of May, 1819, "appears to 
have been in a much greater proportion than that of the white 
population, and it is not improbable, that in a few generations, 
the negro race will exceed the whites in all except the eastern 
states. The number of slaves in the United States, is now 
above two millions, and including the free negroes, the black 
population of America constitutes more than one-fourth part 
of the whole." If all this were accurate, it would refute at 
once the tales which the orthodox journal has so often repeat- 
ed con amore, respecting the treatment of that black popula- 
tion. Ti is marked, however, by the usual ignorance, or spirit 
of exaggeration, where America is in question. Our census 
of 1810 teaches, that, according to the ratio of increase for 
the twenty years preceding, the number of years required for 
the duplication of the whites was 22.48; and that required 
for the slaves, as I have mentioned, 25.99. The whites in- 
creased from 1790 to 1810, 85.26 percent.; the slaves 70.75. 
The mere natural increase is not, however, shown exactly 
by this calculation. We should deduct the annual addition 
made to the numbers of both from without, which would 
probably leave the proportion the same. The whole number 
of slaves in 1810, was 1,191,364: and of free people of co- 
lour, 186,466. Together they did not equal one-fourth of 

* "It appears by Mr Pickmaii's tables," says the Quarterly Review, 
"that the population of England and Wales has nearbj doubled in the 
last kuiitlred S'ca-rs," — a term nearly four times longer than that required 
for the duplication of the American negroes. 



SLAVE TRADE. 415 

ilie white population, which was 5,862,092; nor make but SECT. IX. 
little more than one-sixth of the whole. At present, the ^-^-v-^-' 
proportion must be still less, as ihe ratio of increase for the 
white population is undoubtedly greater.* In 1810, the uhite 
population of the nine slave-holding slates of that period, 
amounted to 2,153,455; that of the coloured, free and en- 
slaved, to 1,242,862. The census of 1820 will give three 
millions at least of white populalion in the slave-holding coun- 
tries of the union; and not more than 1,700,000 of black, 
allowing for the addition made to the number of the last by 
illicit importation. Should we admit the ratio of increase to 
be the same for both, the political arithmetician of the Quar- 
terly Review would find it ditlicult to solve the problem, in 
how many generations " the negro race will exceed the whites," 
especially if he be confined to his own limitation — "in all 
except the eastern states," under which denomination he 
could not mean to include Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; con- 
taining nearly a million of whites, without the alloy of a slave. 

29. The removal of considerable numbers of the slaves 
from the old slave-holding states, to the south and south-west, 
tends materially to increase the relative majority of the whites 
in those states, and is likely to continue, so as greatly to lessen 
the danger to which they may be held to be exposed. The 
slaves emigrate either with their original owners, or with per- 
sons of the same or an adjoining state, to whom they are sold, 
and who purchase them for their own use; or with the negro 
traders as they are called. The greater number go with the 
two fiisi descriptions of persons, to a more fruitful soil; to a 
climate equally or more favourable to their constitutions; alto- " 
gether they suffer but little, if at all, by the change of position. 
They are not, in general, committed to a new master, who is 
unknown; or who does not possess the best testimonials as to 
his views, and the respectability of his character. It had been 
long the practice to sell the intractable slaves, and such as were 
guilty of crimes, to the traders, who disposed of them to the 
planters of South Carolina and Georgia. This disposition 
even of culprits may scandalize the writers of the Quarterly 
Review; but it is not quite so harsh as that of selling them to 

* Tlie operation of It may be understood from the following state 
ment. 

In 1790, for everv 100 free persons, there were 22.13 slaves. 

In 18 JO - ' ditto 20.29 do. 

In ISlfe) - ditto 19.69 do. 



416 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PARTI, the Bey of Tripoli* would have been; nor worse than the 
'^^'^^"^^'^ transportation of the British convicts to Botany Bay, accord- 
ing to the description of it which I have already given in the 
language of members of Parliament;! or to the character of 
it which is implied in the following extract from the volume 
of Parliamentary Debates for the year 1792. "Mr. Fox no- 
ticed the mention that had been made of the transportation of 
convicts to Botany Bay, and said, that the hardships of the 
passage would appear less extraordinary, when it was known, 
that the transportation was undertaken by slave merchants, 
and slave captains, and that a part of the misery of the con- 
victs was the effect of slave fetters being used instead of those 
employed in general for convicts."| 

The proportion of slaves of good character, whom the tra- 
ders obtain, is small comparatively: The severance or disper- 
sion of families is by no means so common as might be sup- 
posed from the tales of the English travellers. This evil is 
produced in England in a hundred instances to one that oc- 
curs among our negroes, and with tenfold affliction, by the 
extensive emigration which the public burdens occasion, and 

* The Report of the Parliamentary proceedings of April, 1819, fur- 
nishes the following-. 

"Mr. Bennet said (House of Commons) he had no high opinion of 
the tender sympathies of ministers on these subjects. He had in his 
recollection what passed on the subject of convicts in the year 1789, 
when they were first sent out; when (the house would scarcely believe 
it) it was proposed and discussed in the Privy Council, ivhether the convicts 
at that time should not be sold to the Bey of Tripoli as slaves ! This propo- 
sition (the proposition of, as we understood, Lord A^ickland) was con- 
sidered, though of course rejected; though it showed how little dis- 
posed the government were at that time to attend to the situation of 
the convicts. At the same time, a ship that was sent out with them had 
not any settled destination ; and the sentences of some of the convicts 
had expired before they reached the colony to which they were at 
length consigned." 

f See page 304. 

I "From the year 1785 to 1801, of 3833 convicts embarked, 385 died 
on board the ti'ansports, being nearly one in ten." O'llara's History of 
' M S. Wales. 

" The difficidties, which for a long course of years attended the plan 
for sending our convicts to New South Wales, gave rise to the convict 
establishments at Woolwick, Slieerness, and Portsmouth : where great 
nuinbers of criminals were crowded together to await the hour of their 
deportation, imder circumstances of the most afflicting nature : many, 
who have been sentenced to transportation, having passed the whole 
period of their punishment in a state of wretclied and useless impri- 
sonment at home. Such was then the condition of these establish- 
ments, that they were pronounced in the House of Commons, by one 
of the best and greatest men that ever entered its walls, to be a hot bed 
of vice and -ivickedness" Roscoe, Observations on Penal Jurisprudences 
1819. 



SLAVE TRADE. 417 

ihe operation of the poor laws; to say nothing of (he cases so SECT. IX. 
common in time of war, of seamen impressed when rt turning "^■^^v"*-' 
from distant voyages, and that even without being allowed 
the comfort of seeing their families. 

Kidnapping is frequent; but the states have universally 
subjected it to the severest penalties; some of them to thai of 
death. As great an abhorrence for it [)ervades the whole 
country, as any crime can be supposed to excite among a 
moral people. The flagr-llaiion of the slaves for misdemeanors, 
or from the impulses of anger, or churlishness in the masters, 
is, no doubt, too common; but it would be every wa\ unjust 
to judge of tlie conduct of the Americans in this respect, by 
what passes in the West Indies. In the use of the lash 
the discipline of the southern plantations is contradistin- 
guished from that of the West Indian, as much as in the de- 
gree of labour and the supply of food. Public opinion, 
and all the other causes of reformation which I have no- 
ticed, operate equally in this matter. But it is not for an 
Englishman to complain of the use of the lash among fo- 
reigners. The hysterica! indignation of the British Reviewers 
and travellers on this head, appears even ludicrous, when we 
advert to the fact, that no nation employs the scourge more se- 
verely or generall}' than the British. Education with her is con- 
ducted with the birch; whipping is almost her sum of discipline 
in the army and navy; the seaman is flogged from ship to ship; 
the soldier, lied up to the halberds and exposed in the most 
shameful and ignominious manner, dies under the stripes of the 
drummer, or is withdrawn only when the surgeon who watches 
his ebbing pulse, declares that nature can bear no more. The 
number of apprentices in Great Britain is, probably, little less 
than that of our negroes; corporal punishment is as familiarly 
inflicted upon them, and as frequently to a brutal excess: I 
attest the Old Bailey calendar, when I assert, that they 
are oftener maimed and murdered by the hand of the mas- 
ters. So horrid and multiplied were the enormities of this 
kind, which accident or private feeling brought to light, that 
the legislature was compelled to interfere; but with how little 
effect the records of the Assizes and the tenor of the late 
Parliamentary Re{)orts, will show. In short, there is no form 
of human suflering which an Englishman is so much accus- 
tomed to witness, to hear and to read of, in his own country, 
as flagellation in all its varieties and degrees. I do not wish 
to pursue this odious topic, on which reprisals might have no 
end, further than to quote a passage of some signilicancy from 

Vol. I.— 3G 



418 JNEGRO SLATER? AND 

PART I. a late and excellent work of Mr. Roscoe of Liverpool. 

^*^^~^^^^»' " It has frequently been observed, with some degree of exul- 
tation, that torture is not permitted in this country. If by 
torture be meant the subjecting a person to the rack, for the 
purpose of c'>mpelling him to give evidence, or to confess an 
imjiuted crime, this country is certainly not chargeable with 
so diabolical a practice. But, if the lacerating and scourging 
the person of an individual, as a punishment for his offences, 
be torture, it is a proceeding not only well known to our laws, 
but of frequent occurrence. There are, in fact, few mutilations 
or sufferings to which the human frame can be subjected, that 
have not, in this country, at one time or another, been resort- 
ed to, as a punishment for offenders; nor does there appear to 
be any obstruction, otlier than such as arises from the more 
improved and humanized spirit of the times, to similar punish- 
ments being again inflicted; but independent of these barba- 
rities, the use of the whip is general throughout the prisons of 
the kingdom, where prisoners, for small offences, are whipped 
and discharged.''''* 

Those advertisements for the recovery of runaways, which 
are copied into the English Reviews, and books of Travels, 
with exclamations of such horror and reproof, as though Eng- 
lish newspapers contained nothing to chafe the feelings of 
humanity, and rouse the spirit of freedom, are incident to the 
existence itself of negro slavery; and I think I have shown 
that this is an evil which could neither be avoided nor remov- 
ed by America. Negroes cannot be held as property, without 
bt'ing subject to alienation. A mortmain would be impracti- 
cable, and if it could be established, mischievous to ail par- 
ties. The proclamation of the intention to sell, ^vhile it gives 
effect to the necessary and useful right of alienation, affords 
the subject of it a betier chance of being transferred into good 
hands. At all events, it is an inevitable incident of an inevi- 
table institution. Slaves who abscond from the master must 
be reclaimed, or there would be an cud to all slavery in the 
most mischievous of all forms of abolition. Without the aid 
of the public, the master would be unable to recover the fugi- 
tive. And it is to be presumed that the latter is, quite as often, 
a delinquent seeking independence for the sake of licentious- 
ness, or from a refractory disposition, as a victim escaping the 
exactions of avarice, or the lash of tyranny. Unfortunately, 
the character of the negro race with us, and indeed the charac- 
ter which is produced in all cases of bondage, might warrant 

* Observations on Penal Jurisprudence, 1819. 



SLAVE TRADE. 419 

a presumption more unfavourable to the slave. His flight is, SECT TX. 
in a general point of view, a violation of the order of society, ^•^""^'^^^ 
which it is the interes't, and, abstractedly, the duly, of every 
citizen to repress and correct. 

The Quarterly Review of May, 1819, after transcribing 
from Fearon's Travels a couple of plain advertisements of 
negroes for sale or hire, which that missionary had extracted 
from a New Yoik paper, proceeds thus — " What, subjoins 
Mr. Fearon with an amiable warmth, should we sny, if in 
England we saw such advertisements in the Times newspaper? 
Should we not conclude that freedom existed only in words? 
Such would, indeed, be a legitimate conclusion." — Alas, then, 
for the freedom of England herself, as late as the year 1772, 
notwithstanding the boasts of the Britons of that day! Clark- 
son and Granville Sharp have kept a record which, upon the 
principles of Mr. Fearon and the Quarterly Review, invali- 
dates all their pretensions. Clarkson, having mentioned the 
opinion given in 1729. by the great law officers of the crown 
— that a slave coming from the West Indies into Great Britain 
did not become free, and that the master might legally compel 
him to return again to the plantations, — makes the following 
statement: 

" The cruel and illegal opinion was delivered in the year 
1729. The planters, merchants, and others, gave it of course 
all the publicity in their power. And the consequences were 
as might easily have been apprehended. In a little time slaves 
absconding were advertised in the London papers as runaways, 
and rewards offered for the apprehension of them, in the same 
brutal manner as we find them advertised in the land of sla- 
very. They were advertised also, in the same papers, to be 
sold by auction, sometimes by themselves, and at others with 
horses, chaises, and harness. They were seized also by their 
masters, or by persons employed by them, in the very streets, 
and dragged from thence to the ships; and so unprotected now 
were these poor slaves, that persons in no wise concerned with 
them began to institute a trade in their persons, making agree- 
ments with captains of ships going to the West Indies to put 
them on board at a certain price." 

Granville Sharp, unmindful, like the British Reviewers, 
that the domestic slavery which Britain had planted in our 
soil, and so assiduously cultivated, could not be exscinded, 
nor divested of its essential properties, also suffered him- 
self to be fired by some New York advertisements. When 
he has recited them, in his "Representation of the Injus- 



420 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 

PART I. lice of Slavery,"* he proceeds, however, in a different 

'^ But hold! perhaps the Americans'may be able, with too 
much jusiice, to retort this severe reflection, and may refer us 
to newspapers pul)lisht:d even in the free city of London, 
which contain advertisements, not less dishonourable than 
their own. See the following advertisement in the Public 
Ledger of i)lst December, 1761. 

"for sale, 

" A healthy Negro Girl, aged about 15 years; speaks good 
English, works at her needle, washes well, does household 
work, and has had the small pox. By I. W. &c." 

Another advertisement, not long ago, offered a reward for 
stopping a female slave who had left her mistress in Hatton 
Garden. And in the Gazetteer of 18fh April, 1769, appear- 
ed a very extraordinary advertisement, with the following 
title. 

" HORSES, TIM WHISKEY, AND BLACK BOY. 

" To be sold, at the Bull and Gate Inn, Holborn, a very 
good Tim Whiskey, little the worse for wear, &c." After- 
wards, " A chesnut Gelding" — Then, "A very good grey 
Mare." — And last of all, (as if of the least consequence) "A 
well made good tempered Black Boy; he has lately had the 
small pox, and will be sold to any gentleman. Enquire as 
above." 

Another advertisement in the same paper, contains a very 

particular description of a negro man, called Jeremiah , 

and concludes as follows: — " Whoever delivers him to captain 
M — u — y, on board the Elizabeth, at Prince's stairs, Rother- 
hithe, on or before the 31st instant, shall receive thirty guineas 
reward, or ten guineas for such intelligence as shall enable 
the captain or his master, effectually to secure him." 

" A Creole Black Boy is also offered to sale in the Daily 
Advertiser of the same date." 

" Besides these instances, the Americans may perhaps 
taunt us with the shameful treatment of a poor negro servant, 
who not long ago was put up to sale by public auction, toge- 
ther with the effects of his bankrupt master. — Also, that the 

* London, 1769. 



SLAVE TRADE. 421 

prisons of this free cily have been frequently prostituted of SECT. ix. 
late by the tyrannical and dangerous practice of confntiiig v-i'~>''->w' 
negroes, under the pretence of slavery, though there has been 
no w'arrant whatsoever for their commitment." 

It may be said that these practices were arrested in Eng- 
land. They were indeed, and so have they been wherever 
this couid be done, in the United States. But they were 
more wanton and malignant in that country, since they 
did not spring out of a general and long established system of 
slavery; and they show how the people of England would 
have acted, if the old law had not p.'-ovcd to be, Uj)on labo- 
rious investigation, peremptory upon the subject. The Bri- 
tish merchant, however, continued to fit out his ship at Liver- 
pool, or London, for the coast of Africa; the British factory 
supplied him with troops of kidnapped negroes; his captain 
transported them, with every refinement of cruelty, to the 
British West Indies, and there adverlised and sold them, un- 
der the sanction of the British government, in the name of his 
owner, a great stickier, perhaps, for liberty and universal 
emancipation; who railed each day against American incon- 
sistency and barbarity in holding and advertising slaves, and 
repeated comi)lacently the well known verses of Covvper, 
" slaves cannot breathe in England," &c. 

30. We do not deny, in America, that great abuses and evils 
accompany our negro slavery. The plurality of the leading 
men of the southern states, are so well aware of its pestilent 
genius, that they would be glad to see it abolished, if this were 
feasible with benefit to the slaves, and without inflicting on 
the country, injury of such magnitude, as no community has 
ever voluntarily incurred. While a really practicable plan of 
abolition remains undiscovered, or undetermined; and while 
the general conduct of the Americans is such only as neces- 
sarily results from their situation, they are not to be arraigned 
for this institution. If, — as I have no doubt is the case, — it 
produces here much less misery and vice, than it produces 
in the other countries which are cursed with it, it fur- 
nishes occasion rather for praise than blame. The native 
Americans claim the distinction of abusing less the dangerous 
power with which it invests the slave holder; of consulting 
more the comfort and general welfare of its victims; than the 
foreigners, Britons not excepted, who so readily participate in 
that power on associating themselves to this nation. Wc are 



422 iSECiRO SLAVERY AND 

TART I. lolti by an English writer, Ramsay,* who is supported in the 
^*^~'*'^*^>^ assertion by Edwards, that, wilh respect to the West India sla- 
very, " adventurers from Europe are universally more cruel 
and morose towards the slaves than the Creoles or native* West 
Indians." The analogy is perfect in our case, and of notoriety. 
It is a matter of old experience in Virginia and the Carolinas; 
and the American planter appears to like advantage at present 
in Louisiana, in the contrast, on this head, with the French and 
Spanish, who have pursued, but who are gradually abandon- 
ing under the saiulary influence of our political and social 
spirit, an hereditary system of rigour. 

In admitting the deformity and evil of our negro slavery, 
we are far from acknowledging, that any nation of Europe is 
entitled, upon a general comparison between our situation as 
it is thus unluckily modified, and her own, with all appen- 
dages and ingredients, to assign to herself the pre-eminence 
in felicity, virtue, or wisdom. On the contrary, we know of 
none with which we^would make a general exchange of" in- 
stitutions," and are assured that there is none, whose mode of 
being on the whole, is not much more unfavourable than ours, 
to the attainment of the great ends of society. Who can 
say that the negro slavery of these slates, combined even with 
every other spring of ill, existing among us, occasions, propor- 
tionably, as much of suffering, immorality and vileness, as the 
unequal distribution of wealth and the distinctions of rank, the 
manufacturing system, the penal code, the taxes, the tythes, 
the poor rates, the impressment, in England-* Are there not 
as many of her inhabitants, as the whole number of our blacks^ 
as effectually "disfranchised;" as entirely uninstructed; in 
the last stage of penury and distress; whose physical con- 
dition universally, is hardly better than that of the most lowly 
plantation slave, and who are heart-struck and broken-spirit- 
ed, if not hardened and enraged? 

Let us examine for a moment how the case stands with the 
jieople of England, as to one of the worst of the effects, with 
which our, and all other domestic slavery, is properly re- 
proached, — the abasement of the human character. Lord 
Sheffield is a witness who will never be suspected of a dispo- 
sition to disparage his country. In 1818, he published a 
pamphlet, entitled Observations on the Poor Laws; which 
contains the following, among other striking representations: 

"There is much truth in the remark that a small additional 
increase of the assessments would, in many instances, render 

* Essay on the treatment and conversion of slaves, &c. 



SLAVE TRADE. 423 

the land productive of no rent at all. The very aggravated Sf:ct. ix. 
situation of our liule farmers is deplorable; it is ruinous." ^^^^r^*^/ 

" In many parishes, three-fourths, sometimes four-fifths of 
the parish, actually receive relief: the greatest part of the po- 
pulaiion have become beggars, and often insolently insist upon 
relief depending rather upon their clamorous demands than on 
their industry, foresight, or economy." 

"The prevailing abuses have brought the country to such 
a pass, and have so demoralized and vitialcd a great^propor- 
tion of the people, that, notwithstanding (he ruinous expense 
incurred by the poor rates, the misery of the lower ranks is so 
far from being alleviated, that it is virtually created and ex- 
tended by it." 

In the House of Commons, March 3d, 1818, Mr. Curwen 
said, that "• ihe inadequacy of wages and the practice of sup- 
plying the deficiency of them from the parish funds, had de- 
stroyed the spirit of independence among the poor.'''' In the 
month of Mafch of the year preceding. Lord Castlereagh re- 
marked to ihe house, that " it must be aware that a great 
proportion of the wages of the country was paid out of the 
poor rates." On the 19ih May, 1819,' Lord J. Russell said, 
in the same place, " he must refer to the conduct of the mi- 
nistry on the important subject of the poor laws, the discus- 
sion of which subject not one of his majesty's ministers had 
attended. A lamented friend of his, whose loss was felt every 
day more and more — he meant Mr. Horner — had observed 
that by the present poor laws, the people were returning fast 
to a state o{ villeinnge. The observation was true; they were 
returning to a state of villeinage., and to a state of villeinage 
that was incalculably more dangerous than that which existed 
six centuries ago in an age of darkness and superstition. 
Sorry was he to say that the once manly peasantry of this 
country, were now becoming lazy and riotous, and disrespect- 
ful to their superiors, and that they were beginiiing to look 
up to the laws with no other view than that of obtaining by 
them a temporary subsistence." 

We have the curious confession of Lord Sidmouth, made 
in the House of Peers, on the 3d June, 1818, that "it was 
notorious the dread of transportation had almost subsided, 
and perhaps had been succeeded by the desire to emigrate to 
JYew South Wales.'''' This desire, which indicates so clearly 
the state of things at home, wotdd not appear, however, to 
have been always indulged. Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, in her 
evidence before the committee of the House of Commons on 
the state of the prisons, mentioned that " several persons. 



'134 NEGKO SLAVERY AND SLAVE TRADE. 

PART I. husbands in anxiety to follow their wives, and vice versa, were 
'-^^-'-'*>-^ induced to commit crimes. She instanced one woman who 
lately sulTered death, viz. Charlotte Newman, acfuated by a 
desire to follow her husband to Botany Bay, who had corn- 
milled the same odence; but it was thought proper to make 
an example of her, and she was executed!'''' 

I could produce lamentations without end, uttered in Par- 
liament and in the British pamphlets on domestic affairs, re- 
specting.this prostration of character among the body of the 
English people. It is one view of the stale of society in Great 
Britain, which excites grief and commisseralion; but there 
are numberless others which fill the mind with horror, and 
bring unequalled disgrace upon human nature. The extent 
and variety of the disorder, corruption, oppression, and bar- 
barity; in short, of every species of guilt, misery, and degra- 
dation, which we find unveiled in the late Parliamentary Re- 
ports concerning the poor laws; the state of the prisons; the 
lunatic asylums, and work houses; the charitable trusts; the 
mendicity and vagrancy, particularly of London; the igno- 
rance of ihe lower orders; the administration of ihe penal code, 
— could not be believed, if they were not so authenticated; 
and can as yet scarcely be conceived to exist in a community 
professing to be well governed, and siyling itself the " best 
and most enlighlpned" in the world.* America will be con- 
tent to admit all that the British travellers have written of her 
negro slavery; to "- hold each strange tale devoutly true;" and 
then to stand the comparison with Great Britain, provided the 
disclosures of these Reports, the practice of impressment, the 
system of discipline in the army and navy, the proceedings 
during the suspension of the habeas corpus act, the excise, and 
the hulks, be kept in view by the umpire. 

• See Note Z. 



NOTES. 



(NOTE A. p. 35.) 

Thi; character of the American Indians is too apt to be underrated PART 1. 
by the liistorians, and the proper degree of credit to be, therefore, ^^-y-^„ 
withheld from the European settlers in North America, as regards the 
issue of tlie struggle. I select from writers, who may be considered as 
of the highest authority, some general views of Indian hostilities. 

" The Indians," says Ramsay, in his History of South Carolina, " in 
their military capacity, were not so inferior to the whites as some may 
imagine. The superiority of muskets over bows and arrows, managed 
by Indians, in a woody country, is not great. The savage, quick-sighted 
and accustomed to perpetual watclifulness, springs from his hiding 
place, behind a bush, and surprises his enemy with the pointed arrow 
before he is aware of danger. He ranges through the trackless forest 
like the beasts of prey, and safely sleeps under the same canopy with 
the wolf and bear. His vengeance is concealed, till he sends the tidings 
in the fatal blow." 

"The Indians go to war," says Franklin, in his Canada Pamphlet, 
" as they call it, in small parties, from fifty men down to five. Their 
hunting life has made them acquainted with the whole country, and 
scarce any part of it is impracticable to such a parly. They can travel 
through the woo^s even by night, and know how to conceal their 
tracks. They pass easily between your forts undiscovered ; and pri- 
vately approach the settlements of your frontier inhabitants. They 
need no convoys of provisions to follow them ; for whether they are 
shifting from place to place in the woods, or lying in wait for an oppor- 
tunity to strike a blow, every thicket and stream furnishes so small a 
number with sufficient subsistence. When they have surprised sepa- 
rately, and murdered and scalped a dozen families, they are gone with 
inconceivable expedition through unknown ways : and it is very rare 
that pursuers have any chance of coming up with them." 

PoiunaWs Mmiiiistraticn of the Colonies. 

" Our American frontiers," says governor Pownall, in his Adminis- 
tration of the Colonies, " from the nature of advancing settlements, 
dispersed along the branches of the upper parts of our rivers, and 
scattered in the disunited vallies, amidst the mountains, must be always 
unguarded, and defenceless against the incursions of Indians. And 
were we able, under an Indian war, to advance our settlements yet far- 
ther, they would be advanced up to the very dens of those savages. A 
settler, wholly intent on labouring on the soil, cannot stand to his arms, 

Vot. I.— 3H 



426 NOTES. 

PART I, nor defend himself against, nor seek his enemy. Environed witli woods 
v^-v-^iJ/ ^"'■' swamps, he knows nothing of the country beyond his farm. The 
Indian knows every spot for ambush or defence. The firmer, driven 
from his httle cultured lot into the woods, is lost; tlie Indian in the woods 
is evcrv where at home ; every bush, ever}' thicket, is a camp to the 
Indian, from whence, at the vei-y moment when he is sure of his blow, 
he can rush upon his prey. Tiie farmer's cow or his horse, cannot go 
into the woods, where alone they must subsist : his wiff and children, 
if they sluit themselves up in their poor wretched log-house, will be 
burned in it : and the husbandman in the Held will be shot down wliile 
his hands hold the plough. An European settler can make but mo- 
mentary efforts of war, in hopes to gain some point, that he may by it 
obtaui a series of securit}', under which to work his lands in peace. 
The Indian's whole life is a warfare, and his operations never discon- 
tinued. In short, our frontier settlements must ever lie at the mercy of 
the savages : and a settler is tlie natural prey to an Indian, whose sole 
occupation is svar and hunting. To countries, circumstanced as our 
colonies are, an Indian is the most ilreadful of enemies. For, in a war 
with Indians, no force whatever can di.-fen(l our frontiers from being a 
constant wretched scene of coriHagralions, and of the most shocking 
murders. Whereas, on tlie contrar), our temporary expeditions against 
these Indians, even if successful, can do these wanderers little harm. 
Every article of their property is portable," &c. 

" The Indians," says Loskiel, in hi.s History of the Indian Missions, 
"need not much provocation to begin a war with the white people ; a 
trifling occurrence may easily furnish a pretence Tht-y frequently 
first determine upon war, and then wait a convenient opportunity, to 
find reasons for it : nor are they much at a loss to find them. 

" It has occasioned much surprise, that, notwithstanding the prevailing 
fear of the Six Nations, lest the Europeans should become too powerful, 
they have sold them one tract of land after the other. Some thought it 
was done merely for the sake of the presents offered by the purchas- 
ers. But experience has shewn, that this settling of land proved the 
best pretence for a war. For when the white people had settled upon 
the purchased territory, they drove them away again. They have fre- 
quently continued their hostilities against the white people, even during 
the settling of the peace, or renewed them soon after In such a cri- 
tical juncture, the Europeans cannot sufficiently guard against the In- 
dians, especially against the Iroquois. They will treat a while person, 
who is ignorant of their evil designs, with all apparent civility, and give 
him victuals and drink, but before he is aware, cleave his skull with an 
hatchet." 



(NOTE B. p. 42.) 

T«E first constitution of South Carolina was framed by Locke. M 
Verplank, in the beautiful Anniversary Discourse, from which I have 
made a long extract in the text, celebrates him among " the illustrious 
dead, the rich fruits of whose labours we are now enjoying;" as one 
of the "original legislators of the country, who gave to our political 
character its first impulse and direction." It appears to me, that the 
great philosopher is not entitled to these distinctions, as far, at least, as 
his fwulamental constitutions ior Carolina are concerned. M. Verplank, 
in claiming for them " Hia?2^ excellent provisions," acknowledges tiial 
they were " in all respects, unnecessarily complicated and artificial." 
I see but two provisions in them worthy of particular approbation — tc 



NOTES. 421 

wit, the biennial parliament, and the perfect freedom in religion. On PART I. 
the whole, it is wonderful how Locke, so practical and sober in his .^^»-v^-^ ^_^ 
speculations generally, could have fallen upon a scheme of govern- 
ment so fanciful, and indeed so preposterous, when viewed in refer- 
ence to tjie character and situation of the colonists for whom it was 
intended. " Nothing," says Chalmers, *' can show more clearly the 
fallibility of the human understanding than the singular fate of these 
constitutions. Discovered instantly to be wholly inapplicable to the 
ciivumstaiices of an inconsiderable colony, and in a variety of cases, to 
be altogether impracticable, they were immediately changed. The 
identity of them was debuted by those to wiiom they were offered as a 
rule of conduct, because they had not been consulted in the formation 
of them. They gave rise to the greatest dissentions, whiciii long dis- 
tracted the province, and engendered civil discord. And, after a 
little period of years, the whole, found inconvenient und even danger- 
ous, were laid aside, and a much simpler form established."* 

"Locke," adds this author, " was, in the year 1670, created a land- 
grave, as a reward for his services ; and, like the other Carolinian no- 
bles created under this constitution, would have been consigned to 
oblivion, but for those writings tliat have enligiUened the world, while 
they have immortalized himself." Those admirable writings had, un- 
doubtedly, a sensible influence over the minds of the American legis- 
lators of a subsequent period. Their impress is distinguishable in our 
present federal constitution particularly. His fundamental principles 
were, however, embodied in political statutes, and put into steady 
action, in the mid.st of the North American wildernes.s, even before 
the era of his birth. If we compare his constitutions for Carolina 
with those which the New England settlers framed for themselves, 
we will not have so much to complain of " the fallibihty of the 
human understanding," as to mock at the pride of philosophy, and 
to question the competency of the highest talents in speculation, to the 
business of devising the true rule of action for communities of men. 
The French philosophers succeeded for their country, no better than 
liOcke for Carolina: Jeremy Bentham's "Codification" is a master- 
piece of absurdity, &c. 



(NOTE 0. p. 48.) 

Thf. body of Roman Catholic gentlemen, who settled M-iryland 
m 1633, a|)pear to me to be clearly entitled to the merit of priority in 
the establishment of religious freedom for all Christian sects. Lord 
Baltimore, as we have seen in the text, by his original plan of polity, 
established Christianity agreeably to the old common law, with the ex- 
press denial of pre-eminence to any sect. His associates recognized 
this principle, and acted upon it from the outset. The first assemblies 
of the freemen of the province, held in 1634-5-7-8-9, all admitted it as 
fundamental. That of 1649, promulged a statute concerning religious 
equality and freedom, which is not only prior in date, as a charter for 
all Christian sects, to any other legislative act of the kind, of which this 
country can boast, but provides more minutely and anxiously than any 
other extant, for the protection of the rights of conscience, and the 
preservation of religious harmony. I know of no law on the subject 

* Annals, p. 528. 



4218 NOTES, 

PART I. bespeaking so tolerant a spirit as to the divisions of Christianity ; so 
.^^ prudent and sound a judgment, and so generous a solicitude. It is to 

be noted, tliat among the early settlers, were several pr;ests. Tlie num- 
ber of these had increased at the date of the act, and tlieir concur- 
rence in its regulations, is ascertaim d from iinqviestionable evidence. 
The toleration of the Church of England might liave been unavoidable 
for the founders of Maryland, and at all events, tended obviously to 
keep them well with the EngUsh government. But no motive of this 
nature existed with respect lo the sectaries, wliose familiar appella- 
tions they enumerated, as far as it was practicable , in tlie law, in onler to 
their greater security even from insult. Tlie favour of the English go- 
vernment was, on the contrary, to be gained by the persecution of the 
Quakers and Puritans. 

Roger Williams began his plantation in Providence in 1636. Rhode 
Island was settled in 1638. In tliese settlements, a system of universal 
toleration would seem to have been pursued from the beginning. 

But there is no specific law on the subject of religious freedom in the 
first code of Rhode Island, of 1647, although the concluiiing paragraph 
of tliat code implies universal toleration. It is s:ud in tlie Pohtical Annals 
of Chalmers,* that among the ordinances of the Rhode Island assembly 
of 1663, there is one which enacts, that " all men professing Chri.'^tianity, 
and of competent estates and civil conversation, Roman Catholics only 
excepted, shall be admitted freemen, or may choose or be chosen colo- 
nial officers." Holmes has repeated this statement in his very useful 
Annals; and its correctness does not appear to have been questioned by 
any of our historians. This disfranchisement of Roman Catholics was 
so little in unison, however, with the doctrines previously asserted and 
acted upon by Rliode Island and her illustrious founder, Roger Williams, 
that it was natural to doubt of the existence of the alledged e.Kception. 
The attention of the public having been drawn to the subject, last win- 
ter, by Mr. Verplank's Discourse, James Burrill, jun. Esq., the distin- 
guished senator from Rhode Island, in the federal congress, zealous for 
the honour and credit of Roger Williams, as the earliest apostle of 
unlimited toleration, solicited Mr. Samuel Eddy, the secretary of 
state of Rhode Island, to make research into her records, with a view 
to ttie solution of the difficulty. Mr. Eddy had occupied the station 
of secretary from October 1797, until May 1819, and acquired a tho- 
rough acquaintance w ith the archives and antiquities of Rhode Island, 
He. is, besides, a gentleman of a discriminating mind and scrupulous 
veracity, who mtist inspire the fullest confidence in every point of 
view. 

Mr. BiuTill has hnd the goodness to communicate to me the answer of 
Mr. Eddy, cont.aining the results of a dihgent investigation. I am induced 
to make it part of this note, notwithstanding its length, being assured 
that it will be considered as interesting and valuable, by all who are 
curious or concerned about American history. It affords a fine lesson 
of state Hberality, and establishes the singular facts — that (he restriction 
in the law, to those only who professed Christianity, and the exception 
of Roman Catholics, were introduced after the )ear 1688, by some 
committee who prepared a new digest of the laws; that if the restric- 
tion, with the exception, was ever approved of by the Rhode Island 
Assembly, this approbation must have been given after 1688 ; and that 
the object of its introduction and continuation was solely to win favour 
in England in the reigns of William and Anne. The bigotry of the 
mother country is set in a striking light, by the necessity of such a 
feint for the acquisition of her good will. 

*C=xi. 



NOTES. 429 

PART T 

Statement of J\Ir. Eddy. 

The first settlers in Providence, (1636) and in the island of Rhode 
Island (1638) were governed by voluntary associations until 1647. Re- 
ligious liberty was fully enjoyed in these associations. In March 1643-4, 
a charter was obtained by Roger Williams from " tlie Governor in 
Chief, Lord Admiral, and Commissioners for foreign plantations," au- 
thorising the inhabitants to adopt " such a form of civil government as 
by voluntary consent of all or the greater part of them, they should 
find most suitable to their estate and condition," " and to make and or- 
dain such civil laws," &c. " as tliey or the greater part of them should 
by free consent agree unto," " to be conformable to the laws ot Eng- 
land so far as the nature and constitution of the place would admit." 

Pursuant to this charter, in May 1647, a form of government and a 
body of laws were agreed to. The laws are thus introduced : 

" And now to the end that we may give each to the other (notwith- 
standing our different consciences, toucliing the truth as it is in Jesus, 
whereof upon the point we all make mention,) as good and hopeful as- 
surance as we are able, touching each man's peaceable and quiet en- 
joyment of his lawful right and liberty, We do agree unto, and by 
the authority abovesaid enact, establish, and confirm these orders fol- 
lowing." 

Among others, "That no person in this colony shall be taken or im- 
prisoned, or be disseised of his lands or liberties, or be exiled or any 
otherwise molested or destroyed, but by the lawful judgment of his 
peers, or by some known law, and according to the letter of it, ratified 
and confirmed by the major part of the General Assembly, lawfully met, 
and orderly managed." 

" For as much as the consciences of sundry men truly conscionable, 
may scruple the giving or taking of an oath, and it would be no ways 
suitable to the nature and constitution of our place, (who profess 
ourselves to be men of diflTerent consciences, and not one willing to 
force another,) to debar such as cannot so do, either from bearing office 
among us, or from giving in testimony in a case depending. Be it 
enacted," &c. " that a solemn profession be accounted of as full force 
as an oath." &c. This body of laws is concluded by these memorable 
words, " These are the laws that concern all men, and these are the 
penalties for the transgressions thereof, which, by common consent, are 
ratified and established throughout the whole colony. And otherwise 
than thus, what is herein forbidden, all men may walk as their con- 
sciences persuade them, every one in the name of his God. And let 
the lambs of the Most High walk in this colony without molestation, in 
the name of Jehovah their God, for ever and ever." 

These are all the laws relating to this subject under the charter of 
1643-4. The second charter bears date July 8, 1663, was brought over 
(by Capt. George Baxter,) and presented to the Court of Commission- 
ers November 24, 1663, and the next day to " a very great meeting 
and assembly of the freemen of the colony." The day following, the 
Court of Commissioners resigned their authority, and declared them- 
selves dissolved. 

The preamble to this charter recites, " that whereas in their hum- 
ble address, they have freely declared, that it is much in their hearts (if 
they may be permitted) to hold forth a lively experiment, that a most 
flourishing civil state, may stand, and best be maintained, and that among 
our English subjects, with a full liberty in religious concernments," and 
then declares, " That no person within the said colony at any tinie 
hereafter shall be any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in 
guestien, for any dtiFerences in opinion in matters of religion, who do 



430 NOTES. 

PART I. not actually disturb the civil peace of our said colony, but that all and 
i,^^^-«y-^^ every person and persons may Crom time to time, and at all times liere- 
after (v> ely fmd fully have and enjoy his and their own judgments and 
consciences in matters of religious concernments, they behaving them* 
selves peaceably and quietly, and not using this hberty to licentiousness, 
and profaneness, nor to the civil injury or outward disturbance of 
others." 

'["he first meeting of the General Assembly under this charter, was 
March 1, 1663-4, when the government was organized. They repealed 
certain laws, which were " contradictory to the form of the present 
government," and " ordered and enacted that all other laws be of 
force, until some other course be taken by a General Assembly for 
better provision therein." 

The procet dings of this session are all entire, and there is ?iot a -word 
on record, of the act referred to by Chalmens, Political Annals, c. xi. 
and contained in the revision of 1745, purporting to have been passed 
the session of 1663-4. 

Nor is there any thing on record, at either of the sessions this year, 
which has any relation to the subject, unless the following may be so 
considered. At May session, the inhabitants of Block Island, being 
incorporated into a town, the recorder (secretary) was desired to fur- 
nish them with " a transcript of the body of laws," (enacted under 
the first charter) and " at present," to communicate to them the fol- 
lowing words of the charter, to wit, " That no person within the said 
colony at any time hereafter, shall be any wise molested, punished, dis- 
quieted, or called in question for any difference of opinion in matters of 
religion, who do not actually disturb the civil peace of the said colony." 
At the same time, John Sands and Joseph Kent, freemen of Block 
Island, presented a petition in behalf of a number of the inhabitants of 
that island, praying that the latt<r might be admitted freemen of the 
colony, " and being demanded, if they did know, that all the aforesaid 
persons were men of peaceable and good behaviour, and likely to prove 
worthy and helpful members in the colony, they answered yea." 
Wherepon they were admitted. No where have I discovered any en- 
quiry respecting religion, on the admission of fr.^emen 

At the session, in May, 1665, three of the king's commissioners, Carr, 
Cartwright, and Maverick, presented to the General Assembly five 
propositions or proposals as they are called in the records ; the first and 
second of which are in these words, — 1st. *' That all householders inha- 
biting this colony, take the oath of allegiance, and that tiie administra- 
tion of justice be in his majesty's nume " 2d. " That all men of com- 
petent estates, and civil conversation, who acknowledge, and are obedi- 
ent to the civil magistrate, though of different judgmtnts, may be ad- 
mitted freemen, and have liberty to choose and to be chosen officers 
both civil and military." 

In answer to the first, after saying much about liberty of conscience 
in relation to oaths, &c. (See Hist. Collections Massachusetts, vol. 7. 
2d series, p. 95 ) they enacted, that an «' engagement of allegiance" 
should be given (the form of which is prescribed) " by all men capable, 
within their jurisdiction." 

In answer to the second, they enacted, " That so many of them that 
take the aforesaid engagements, and are of competent estates, civil 
conversation, and obedient to the civil magistrate, shall be admitted 
freemen of this colony, upon their express desire therein declared to 
the General Assembly, either by themselves, with sufficient testimony 
of their fitness and qualifications, as shall by the Assembly be deemed 
satisfactory, or if by the chief oflScers of the town or towns where they 
live, they be proposed and declared as abovesaid, and that none shall 
have admission to vote for public officers or deputies, or enjoy any pri- 



NOTES. 431 

vilege of freemen, till admitted by the Assembly as aforesaid, and their PART I. 
names recorded in the ijeneral records of the colony." V^-^c^^^ 

To the third proposal (See Hist. Cull. Mass. p. 99.) they say, " This 
Assembly do wiih all gladness of heart and humbleness of mind, ac- 
knowledge the great goodness of God, and favour of his Majesty in 
that respect, derlariiig, that as it hath been a principle held forth and 
maintained in this colony from tlievery beginning thereof, so it is much in 
their hearts to procure the same liberty to ail persons vvitiiin this colony 
forever, as to the worship of God therein, taking care for the preserva- 
tion of civil government, to the doing of justice, and preserving each 
other's privileges from wrong and violence of others." 

Among other reasons assigned in a law allowing compensation to the 
members of Assembly, to enable them tiie better to discharge their 
duties, passed September, 166G, is this, " So as in some good measure 
to answer one main ground of his Majesty's grant, which was to hold 
forth a lively experiment, that a most flourishing civil state may stand 
and best be maintained, and that among his English subjects, with a 
full liberty in religious concernments." 

A militia law, jjassed May, 167/, is concluded with the words, " Pro- 
vided alwaj s, that this Assembly do hereby declare, that it is their full 
and unanimous resolution, to maintain a full liberty in religious concern- 
menis, relating to the worship of God, and that no person inhabiting 
witiiin this jurisdiction shall be in any wise molested, punished, dis- 
quieted or called in question for any difference in opinion in matters 
of religion, who do not actually disturij the civil peace of this colony." 

1 have formerly examined the records of the state, from its first set- 
tlement, with a view to historical information, and lately, from 1663 to 
1719, with a particular view to this law, excluding Roinan Catholics 
from the privileges of freemen, and can find nothing that has any re- 
ference to it, nor any tiling that gives any preference or privileges to 
men of one set of religious opinions over those of another, until the 
revision of 1745. 

It remains now to accotint for the law quoted by Chalmers, as con- 
tained in this revision of 1745. To do this, it may be proper to state, 
that the general practice was, and which continued imder different re- 
gulations till 1798, (the date of the last revision,) either for the secre- 
tary or others united with him, to draw up in form the laws and pro- 
ceedings at the close of each session, and for the secretary to record 
the same, and until 1747, to send copies in manuscript under the seal of 
the colony, to the several towns. The first order for printing the pro- 
ceedings of the General Assembly, was in October, 1747. The first 
edition of the Zaws was printed in 1719.* This was attended with so 
many errors, that a committee was apjjointed to correct them, in a sup- 
plement that was to be printed and annexed to the edition. The second 
was printed in 1730, by whom, or at what place I have not learnt, 
Neither of these editions is in the secretary's office, nor have I been 
able to find them. The third was printed in Newport, in 1745, and 
from which I imagine Chalmers quoted. 

The laws have been uniformly revised by committees. Their prac- 
tice has been to embody in one all the different laws on the same sub- 
ject previously passed, with such additions and amendments as they 
thought proper, confirmed however, before publication, by the General 
Assembly. The two last revisions (1767 and 1793,) give no date to the 
several laws, other than by figures in the margin, generally opposite the 
title or first section of the law, referring to the years when the different 
laws embodied in one are supposed to have been passed. These refer- 
ences are inaccurate and deficient. 

* By Nicholas Boone in Boston. 



NOTES. 

PART I. I" tl'C revision of 1745,* the -whole of every law purports to lia7« 
^^^•^^^^ , been passed at a particuhir session, though composed of a number of 
acts passed in different and subsequent years, and which, in many in- 
stances are referred to in the margin. None of them are dated before 
March, 1663 4, the time of the first meeting under the second charter, 
and of those which bear tliis date 7iot one section of any one of them was 
passed at this session. Tlie following act, bearing this date, is traced 
from its origin, as a specimen of the inaccurucy of the dales in this 
revision of 1745. "Be it enacted," &c. "That there be one seal 
made for tlie public use of the colony, and that the form of an anchor 
he engraven thereon, and the motto thereof shall be the word Hope." 
In the laws of 1647, " It is ordi red that the seal of the Province shall 
be an anchor." There is nothing more on this suiyect till March, 
1663-4, when "ordered that for the present, the old seal that hath 
been the seal of the colony, shall be the present seal," until a new one 
be procured. May 1664, " ordered, that the seal with the motto 
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, with the word Hope, over 
the head of the anchor, is the present seal of the colony." This con- 
tinued to be the seal till 16S6, when on the surrender of the charter, it 
was broken by Sir Edmund Amlros, and in February, 1689, the charier 
having been resumed, it was " ordered that the seal brought in by Mr. 
Arnold Collins, being the anchor, with the motto Hope, is appointed to 
be the seal of the colony, he having been employed by this Assembly to 
make it." This is now in the secretary's office, and has ever since been 
the seal of the colony and state, is the only one of this description the 
colony ever had, and is the same pointed out in the before mentioned 
act (revision of 1745) purporting to have been passed in 1663-4. 

The intention in this revision appears to have been either to date the 
laws at or after the time when the operations of government com- 
menced under the second charter, as having derived all their validity 
from that, or to let the whole of each law compiled as before men- 
tioned, bear date when the first act on the subject was supposed ,to 
have existed under the second charter. For although the " body of 
laws," as enacted under the first charter was continued under the 
second, yet in no instance do our printed laws imply or express 
an existence before 1663-4.f Whatever the intention was, great 
inacuracy exists as to their true date. Thus the law particularly re- 
ferred to by Chalmers, the greater part of which is from Magna 
Charta, was in substance passed in 1647, as will appear by an extract 
on the former part of this communication. The latter part of the law, 
and which has occasioned this inquiry, is in these words, " And that all 
Tne.n professing Christianity, and of competent estates, and of civil con- 
versation, who acknowledge, and are obedient to the civil magistrate, 
though of different judgments in religious affairs, Romaii Catholics 
only excepted, shall be admitted freemen, and shall have liberty to cjioose 
and he chosen officers in the colony, both mihtary and civil." Now 
that this law was not passed in 1663-4 is most certain, for not only does 
it make no part of the record of either session this year, but omitting 
the words professing Christianity, and Roman Catholics only excepted, 
they are the verv words of the second proposition of Carr, Cartwright 
and Maverick, made to the General Assembly in May 1665, and 
which at the same time were enacted into a law. 

In addition to this, these commissioners, in a narrative of their pro- 

* There have been five 1719, 1730, 1745, 1767, and 1798 
f Policy m!a,ht liave suggested the imprudence of noticing an au- 
thority derived from an act of the Long Parliament, under which the 
first charter was granted. 



NOTES. 



433 



ceedings, under their commission, (Hutchinson's Col. 412.) expressly PART. I. 
state that this colony " admit all to he freemen that desire it, they allow .^^ _ -^_. 
liberty of conscience and worship to all who live civilly." They fur- 
ther say, that " this colony, wiiich admi's of all religions, even Quakers 
and Generalists, was begun by such as the Massachusetts would not 
suffer to live among them, and is generally hated by the other colonies, 
who endeavoured several ways to suppress them." 

The answer of the colony in 1680, to the enquiries of the commis- 
sioners for foreign plantations as stuted by Chalmers, is a farther con- 
firmati(m of the correctness of this statement, in which they say, that 
all of diff<;rent persuasions and principles " enjoy their liberty accord- 
ing to his Majesty's gracious charter." " We leave every man to walk 
as God shall persuade their hearts, and do actively, impassively yield 
obedience to the civil magistrate." Though Chalmers, supposing the 
law relative to Roman Catholics to have been passed in 1663-4, consi- 
ders this answer to have been a designed concealment of that act. 

Thus you have positive and indubitable evidence, that the law ex- 
eluding Ronlan Catholics from the privileges of freemen was not passed 
in 1663-4, but that they were, by law, at this time, and long after, en- 
titled to all the privileges of other citizens ; and satisfactory evidence, 
that these privileges were continued by law until 1719, when, or in one 
of the subsequent revisions, the words "professing Christianity," and 
" Roman Catholics only excepted," were inserted by the revising commit- 
tee. These words may jiossibly have been inserted in a manuscript 
copy of the laws sent over in 1699, but of this the words afford no evi- 
dence. 

Roger Williams was an assistant (memberof the upper house) in the 
years 1664, 1670, and 1671. He vv as chosen in 1677, but refused to 
serve. He was also a deputy (member of the lower house) in May, 
1667. These are the only years in which he was in office under the 
second charter. He died in 1682; " When he was buried with all the 
solemnity the colony w:is able to shew." (Callender.) Most of the first 
settlers v/ere dead at this time. lndee<l, that such a law should have 
been passed in the lifetime of the first settlers, is hardly credible. Re- 
ligious liberty was their pride and boast. The records abound with 
allusions to it. (See Coll. Mass. Hist. Society, vol. vii. 2d series, pp. 83, 
85, 88, 103-4. See also. Hutch Coll. 154) The legal enjoyment of it 
was granted and secured at their special request ; and, notwithstanding 
this distinguishing feature in their government was stigmatized with 
the most reproachful and opprobrious epithets, they considered it as 
their highest honour ; and themselves in the enjoyment of a natural 
right, denied to the great body of mankind. 

I acknowledge that this account does not exhibit a very flattering view 
of the legislative accuracy of Rhode Island ; but I believe it exhibits a 
true one, and that is my object. It may be proper to add, that each 
revision of the laws appears to have been attended with delays and dis- 
appointments. It was nearly twenty years after the appointment of the 
first committee, for revising and printing the laws, before the publica- 
tion of the first edition. There was no printing press in the colony till 
1745, and no newspaper printed till 1758. The colony was frequently 
pressed by the government in England for copies of their laws and other 
proceedings, and, in 1699, they sent over a copy of the laws in manu- 
script. How, or from what originals they were made up, does not ap- 
pear. As usual, it was done by a committee. A list of the laws was 
ordered to be left in the secretary's office, but is not now to be found. 

I would also suggest, that it appears at all times to have been an im- 
portant object with the colony to be on the best terms with the mother 
country. Being poor, of small extent of territory, and in contention 
with the bordering colonies, both on account of its boundaries and to 

Vol. I.— 3 I 



434 



NOTES. 



PART I. lerating principles, it refpiirerl the special protection ot tiie British go- 
\,^r>r~^^ vernment. 1 ain inclined to think, ihat the exception of Roman Catho= 
lies in tlie ]irinted laws (1745), was inserted with the view of ingratiating' 
the colon} tlie more with the motiier country. I have no evidence ot 
this bill the jreneral tenor of the hnvs, and the spirit of liberality which 
they always manifest on religious subjects. In 1696, a letter was re- 
ceived from William Blaithwait, containing' a form of association, recom- 
mendid to be entered into, to defend the king against the con^-piracies 
of the papists, "in consequence of the discovery of the late horrid con- 
spiracj against his maj.'Sty," (the assassination plot). It does not ap- 
pear, howe^■er, that the genend assembly took any steps about it. Why 
a law should be p .ssed to exclude from the priviletjes oi' freemen, those 
who were not inhabitants, bv those who believed a// to be equally enti- 
tled to their religious opinions, is difficult to conceive, unless for the 
purpose above suggested. There were no Roman Catholics in the co- 
lony in 168'J. (Chalmers, 284 ) That this colony was an as\ liun for the 
persecuted of all religions, as well of those of none, is evident from 
Cotton Mather, who says, anno 1695, "Rhode I.sland colony is a collec- 
tion of Antinomlans, Familists, Aniisabbatarians, Arminians, Socinians, 
Quakers, Ranters, and every thing btit Roman Catholics and true Cnris- 
tians." Douglas, vol. ii. 110, 112 The same fact is established by the 
testimony of others of the old writer.s. who speak of the colony with the 
Utmost contempt on that account, and also by tlie evidence of the colo- 
nial records. In the proceedings of June session, 1684, is this entry, 
"In answer to the petition of Simon Medus. D-vid Brown, and associ- 
ates, being .Tews, presented to this assembly, bearing date June 24, 
1684, 'we declare they may expect as good protection here as aini 
stranger, not being- of our nation, residing among us, in this his majesty's 
colony, ought to have, being obedient to his majesty's laws.'" These 
Jews are supposed to have been Portuguese. 

On the revocation of tlie edict of Nantz, many of the Hiigonots set- 
tled in this colony. In the proceedings of February session, 1689-90, 
is this entry : " Ordure, I, that the Frenchmen that reside at Narragan- 
selt be sent for by Major John Greene, to what place in Warwick he 
shall appoint, to si.gnifv unto them the king's pleasure, in his proclama- 
tion oi \var (against France), and his indulgence to such Frenchmen as 
behave themselves well, and require their engagements thereunto." 

It is observable, that the laws of the colony never made any provision 
for ascertaining' any other qiuilification of a freeman, than competency 
of estate, and that no test or oath could ever be required by law oi any 
man in any case. 

There is one trait in the laws of the first settlers of this colony, which 
places them, as advocates for the equal rit;hts of all men in matters of 
religion, on an elevation above their contemporaries The liberality 
of the most liberal of the latter is confined to Christians, believers in Je- 
sus'" holy church, (Chalmers, 213, 215, 218, 235.) ; that of the former is 
extended to all men of civil conversation, without regard to their opi- 
nions, whether Christians or Jews, believers in Moses, or Jesus, or Ma- 
homet, or neither. The/»/e only, bein.g of competent estates, furnished 
to the former evidence of tlie fitness to be freemen. Ciialmers justly 
contends for the equal rights of the Roman Catholics with other Chris- 
tians, and he ought, for the same reasons, to have contended for the 
equal rights of Jews, Mahometans, and all others, whether believers or 
not believers ; for their natural rights are certainly equal. 

N. B. The records of the colony from 1663 to 1686 are entire. From 
the latter period to 1715, the proceedings of the General Assembly are 
not recorded ; but manuscript copies of^ the proceedings during this 
period, under the seal of the colony, are in the town clerk's office, and 
'oracof them in the secretary's office, and have been examined, except 



NOTES. 



435 



for the year 1692, in wliich I have found Uie proceedings of one session PART. I. 
only. _jr . -|^ 

The foregoing is a copy of a communication from Mr Samuel Eddy, 
secretary of this state from October, 1797, to May, 1819, and now re- 
presentative in Conyress, in reply to enquiries nuide by me relative to 
the correctness of tiie assertion of Chalmers, (I'oliticai Annals, p. 276,) 
tliat the toleration of Roger Williams and the first seltiers, at Provi- 
dence and Rhode Island, did not extend to Roman Catholics. 

JAMES liUURlLL, Junr. 

Providence, JMaij 12, 1819. 



(NOTE U, p. 51) 

It will he thought extraordinary, that Mr. Brougham, wlio appears to 
liave read our history, and not to be unacquainted with thai of England, 
should have hazarded such a statement as the following, in his Colonial 
Policy. " L'lng after the motlier country liad relinquished /or ever the 
arts of persicution, they founil vot;iries in the constituted autiioriiies of 
the colonies; and the northern states, at the end of the seventeenth 
century, a)l'ord< d the disgraceful example of that spiritual tyranny, from 
which their territories had originally served as an asylum !"* The per- 
secutions for witchcraft, of which I have given a full exjilanation in (he 
text, are the only instances of spiritual persecution, if they can be so 
"denominated, which disgrace the annals of New England at so late a 
period as the close of the seventeenth century. None took place after- 
wards in any of ttie colonies, except in New York, where the royal go- 
vernor. Lord Cornbury, of detested memory, attempted to stifle the 
Presbyterian worsiiip ;f and in Maryland, against the Catholics, at the 
instigation of the British government. It is true, that the legislatures 
of Massachusetts and New York passed each, in the first year of the 
eighteentii century, a law proscribing Catholic priests ; but the motive 
was political ; it being believed that those priests laboured uniformly 
to excite the Indians to hostilities against the Anglo-Americans. No 
dotibt, the spirit of intolerance contiii'ied for some time lo prevail, in a 
gr^*ater or less degree, against popery, alternately the bugbear and the 
stalking-horse of tlie British rulers. They, however, not oidy studiously 
fomented, but exacted that spirit in the colonies; where, as we have 
seen in the last Note, it was even thought necessary to counterfeit per- 
secution, in orfler to retain their fivoiir. 

The author of the Colonial Policy has not specified the period at which 
the mother country relinquished for ever the arts of persecution ; and 
after which the constituted authorities of the colonies cultivated them ; 
but he is to be understood as referring to the end of the seventeenth 
century. His accuracy, or his candour, will he illustrated by the follow- 
ing extracts, which I make from an article of the Edinburgh Review,t 
commonly ascribed to his pen. 

" The arms of William III. overthrew the last remnant of Catholic 
government or ascendancy in Briiain and Ireland; and, by the articles 
in Limerick, which closed the scene of hostility in 1691, it was ex- 
pressly stipulated, that the Roman Catholics should enjoy such privi- 
leges, in the exercise of their religion, as are consistent with the laws 

* B. I. p. 1. f See Smith's History of New York, vol. iii. p. 119. 
i Volume for 1807. Article on Catholic Question. 



43'6 NOTES. 

PART I. of Ireland, or as they did enjoy in the reign of Charles II. ; and the^r 
^^-^/"^^ majesties, as soon as they can summon a parliament in this kingdom, 
will endeavour to procure the said Roman Catholics such farther security 
in that particular as may preserve them from any disturbance on account 
of their religion. This solemn instrument of pacification, granted in 
the moment of victory, was ratified and published in letters patent, un- 
der the great se;il, in the fourth year of king VVilliara ; and in three 
years thereafter, was passed, in direct violation of it, the famous act for 
preventing the growth of popery, the foundation and model of the many 
barbarous enactments by uhich that race of men were oppressed for 
little less than a century thereafter." 

•' By this barbarous act, and the satutes by which it was followed up, 
Catiiolics were disabled from purchasing or inheriting land, — from being 
guanlians to their own children, — from having arms or horses, — from 
serving on grand juries, — from entering in the inns of court, — from prac- 
tising as barristers, solicitors, or physicians, &c. &c." 

" At the close of the reign of Queen Anne, in short, when the privi- 
leges and hberties of Englishmen stood on so triumphant a footing, 
nothing remained to two-thirds of the mhabitants of Ireland, by which 
they could be distinguished from slaves or aliens, but the right of voting 
at elections. Of this, too, they were deprived under the succeediiig 
sovereigns." 

The following account of the above mentioned act, and of some of 
its effects, given in Mr. Burke's speech of 1780, at Bristol, previous to 
the election, is a still more pointed commentary upon the assertion that 
the arts of persecution were relinqtiished in Great Britain, for ever, at 
the end of the seventeenth century. 

"A statute was fabricated," sajs Mr. Burke, "in the year 1699, by 
which the saying mass (a chiircli-service, in the Latin tongue, not ex- 
actly the same as our liturgy, but very near it, and containing no offence 
against the laws, or against gool morals,) was forged into a crime pu- 
nishable wiih perpetual imprisonment. The teaching school, an useful 
and virtuous occupation, even the teaching in a private family, was, in 
every Catholic, sul)jected to the same unproportionate punishment — 
Your industry, and the bread of your children, was taxed for a pecuniary 
reward to stimulate avarice to do what nature refused, to inform and 
prosecute on this law — Every Roman Catholic was, under the same act, 
to forfeit his estate to liis nearest Protestant relation, until, through a 
profession of wliat he did not believe, he redeemed, by his hypocrisy, 
what the law liad transferred to the kinsman as a recompense of his 
profligacy. Wlien thus turned out of doors from his paternal estate, 
he was disabled from acquiring any other by any industry, donation, or 
charity ; but Vv-as rendered a foreigner in his native land, only because 
he retained the religion, along with the property, handed down to him 
from those who had been the old inhabitants of that land before him." 

" The effects of the act have been as mischievous, as its origin was 
shameful. From that time, every person of that communion, lay and 
ecclesiastic, has been obliged to fly from the face of day. The clergy, 
concealed in garrets of private houses, or obliged to take a shelter 
(hardly safe to themselves, but infinitely dangerous to their country) 
under the privileges of foreign ministers, officiated as their servants, 
and under their protection. The whole body of the Catholics, con- 
demned to beggary and to ignorance in their native land, have been 
obliged to learn the principles of letters, at the hazard of all their other 
principles, from the charity of your enemies. They have been taxed to 
their ruin, at the pleasure of necessitous and profligate relations, and 
according to the measure of their necessity and profligacy. Examples 
of this are many and affecting. Some of them are known by a friend 
who stands near me in this hall. It is but six or seven years since ^ 



NOTES. 437 

clergyman, of the name of Malony, a man of morals, neither guilty, nor PART I. 
accused of any tiling noxious to the state, was condemned to perpetual ^_^,^_ -.^_ . 
imprisonment for exercising the functions of his religion; and, alter 
lying in jail two or three years, was relieved by the mercy of govern- 
ment from perpetual imprisonment, on condition of perpetual banish- 
ment. A brother of the earl of Shrewsbury, a Talbot, a name respect- 
able in this country, wliilst its glory is any part of its concern, was 
hauled to the bar of the Old Builey, among common felons, and only 
escaped the same doom, either by some error in the process, or that 
the wretch who brought him there could not correctly des'-ribe his 
person ; I now forget which," &c. (See on this subject — Note V.) 



(NOTEE. p. 86.) 

"On the 14th of December, 1795," says Bryan Edwards (Hist, of W. 
Indies, b. ii.) "the Britisii commissioners who went to the hwdnn-j fur 
assistance, arrived at Montego Bi^ with forty chasseurs or Spanish 
hunters (chiefly people of colour) and about ont hundred Spanish dogs.^* 
Tlieir number was rt^ally one hundred and twenty according to Dallas, 
and a great proportion of them not regularly trained, so that the fugi- 
tive whom they overtook could not escape being lorn in pieces by thetn. 
The following compact is copied from Dallas's History (vol ii.) — 

" Articles of Agr^ emenl between his Britannic Majesty's Commissary 
and the undersigned Spanisii Chasseurs. 

" 1st. We,^ the undersigned, ol)lige ourselves to go to the island of 
Jamaica, taking each three dogs for the hunting and seizing negroes. — 
2d. That, wlien arrived at the said island, and informed of the situation 
of the runaway or rebellious negroes, we oblige ourselves to [)ractice 
every means that may be necessary to pursue, and apprehend with our 
dogs, said rebellious negroes. — 3d. Our stay in the island shall be three 
montiis. — 4th. If, at the expiration of our being three months in the 
island of Jamaica, government should consider our residence there for 
a longer time necessary, it then shall be at our option to make a new 
agreement," &c. [Here follow the signatureSj &c.] 



(NOTE F. p. 92.) 

"To his most excellent majesty George, King of Great Britain, &c. 
&c. 

"The humble petition of his subjects the late French inhabitants of 
Nova Scotia, formerly settled on the Bay of Minas and rivers thereunto 
belonging; now residing in the province of Pennsylvania, on behalf of 
themselves and }e rest of the late inhabitants of the said bay, and also of 
those formerly settled on the river of Annapolis-Royal, wheresoever 
dispersed. 

" May it please your Majesty, 

" It is not in our power sufficiently to trace back the conditions upon 
which our ancestors first settled in Nova Scotia, under the protection of 
your majesty's predecessors, as the greatest part of our elders who 
were acquainted with these transactions are dead, but more especially 
because our papers which contained our contracts, records, &c. were 
by violence taken from us, some time before the unhappy catastrophe 



438 NOTES. 

PART I. which lias been the occasion of llie calamities we o.ve now under, but. 
s,^F~v--^fc^ vve aKvavs understood tlie foundation thereof to be from an aijreemcnt 
made between your in.ijesty's commctuders in Xova Scotia, and our fore- 
fathers, about the year 1713, whereby they were permitted to rem lin 
in tiie possession of theii' lands, under an oatli of fidelity to the Britisii 
gf)vernment, with an exemption from bearing arms, and the allowance 
of the free exercise of th( ir re ligion. 

"It is a matter of certainty (and within the compass of some of our 
memories) that in the year 17oU, general Philips, th'-n governor of Nova 
Scotia, did in your majcsiy's name confirm unto us, and all the inhabi- 
tants of tlie vviiole extent of the bay of Mmas ancl rivers thereunto be- 
longing, the free and entire possession of those lands we « er. theii 
possessed of, whicli by grants from the former Fr nch government we 
held to us and our heirs forever, on paying the cusioHiary quit-rents, &c. 
And on condition tiiat we should behave witii due submissioit and fidehty 
to your majesty, agreeable to iha oath which was then administered to 
us, which is as follows, viz. 

"We sincerely promise and swear by the faith of a Ciiristian, that 
" we shall be entirely faiihfid, and will truli su:)mit ourselves to his 
" majesty king George, whom we acknowledge as sovereign lord of 
"New Scotland, or Arcadia; so God help us." 

"And at the same time, the said general Philips did in lii;e manner 
jiromise the said French inh.Hbitants in your majesty's name, ' That they 
should have ihe true exercise of their religion, and be exempted from 
bearing arms and from being employed in war eitlier against tht French 
or Indians.' Under the sanction of this solemn engagement we lield our 
lands, made further purchases, annually paying our quit-rents, kc and 
we had the greatest reason to conclude that }'our majesty did not disap- 
prove of the above agreement : and that our cond<ict continued d iring 
a long course of years to be such us recommended us to your gracious 
protection, and to the regard ot the governor of New FiOgland, appears 
from a printed declaration made seventeen years after tins time, by his 
excellency William Shirley, governor of New England, whicli was pub- 
lished and dispersed in our country, some originals of whicJT have 
escaped from the general destruction of most of our papers, part of 
which is as follows. 

" By his Majesty's command, 

" A declaration of William Sliirley, Esq. captain-general and governor 
in chief, in and over his majesty's province of .Massach'isetts Bay, Sec. 

" 'I'o his majesty's subjects the French inhabitants of his province of 
Nova Scotia: Whereas upon being informed that a report had been pro- 
pagated atnong his majesty's subjects the French inhabitants of his 
province of Nova Scotia, that there was an intention to remove them 
from their settlements in that province, I did, by my declaration, dated 
16th September, 1746, signify to them that the same was groundless, 
and that I was on the contrary pex'suaded that his in.ijesty would be gra- 
ciously pleased to extend his royal protection to all sucli of them as 
should continue in tlieir fidelity and allegiance to him, and in no wise 
abet or hold corresptuidcnce with die enemies of his crown, and there- 
in assured them that I would m;ike a fiivourable reprc.-i' ntation of their 
State and circumstances to his rnaji-sty, and did accordingl}' transmit a 
representation thereof to be laid before him, and have thereupon re- 
ceived his royal pleasure, touching h,s aforesaid subjects in Nova Scotia, 
with his express commands to signify the same to them in his name : 
Now by virtue thereof, and in obedience to his m ijesty's said ordi-rs, 1 
do hereby declare in his majesty's name, that there is not the least foun- 
dation for any apprehensions of his majesty 's intending to remove them, 
tlie said inhabitants of Nova Scotia, from their said settlements and ha- 



NOTES. 



439 



citations within the said province, bnt that on the contrary, it is his ma- PART I. 
Jesty's resoKition to protect and maintain all sucii of tliein us Iiave ad- _„- -^ • 
hered to and shall continue in their duty and allegiance to him in the 
quiet and peaceable possession or" their ri spective habitations and set- 
tlements, and in the enjoyment of their rights and privileges as iiis sub- 
jects, &c. &c. 

" Dated at Boston, the 21st of October, 1747. 

" And this is farther contirmed liy a letter dated 29lii June in the same 
year, wrote to our deputies by Mr. Mascarine, then your majesty's chief 
commander in Nova Scotia, which refers to governor Sinrley's first de- 
claration, of which we have a copy legally authenticated, part of which 
is as follows, viz.. 

" ' As to the fear you say you labour under on account of being threat- 
'enedio be made to evacuate the country you have in possession, his 
'excellency William Shirley's printed letter, whereby you may be made 
'easy in that respect: jou are sensible of the promise 1 have made to 
'you, the effects of whicli you have already felt, that I would protect 
' you so long as by 3 our good conduct and fidelity to the crown of Gi-eat 
' Britain you would enable me so to do, which promise I <.!o again repeat 
' to you.' 

" Near the time of the publication of the before mentioned declara- 
tion, it was required that our deputit s should, on l)ehalf of all the peo- 
ple, renew the oath formerly taken to general Pinlips, which was done 
without any mention of beai'ing arms — and we can with truth say, that 
we are not sensible of any alteration in our disposition or conduct since 
that time, but that we always contmucd to retain a grateful regard to 
j'our majesty and your government, notwitlistanding which we have 
found ourselves surrounded with difl'irulties unknovi'n to us before. 
Your majesty determined tofortif}' our province and settle Halifax; wjiich 
the French looking ujion with jealousy, they made frequent incursions 
through our country in order to annoy that settlement, whereby we came 
exposed to many straits and hardshi[)S; yet from the obligations we were 
under, from the oath we had taken, we were never under any doubt but 
that it was our indispensible duty and interest to remain true to your go- 
vernment and our oath of fidelity, hoping that in time those tiifficulties 
would be removed, and we should see peace and tranquillity restored : 
and if, from the change of affairs in Nova Scotia, your majesty had 
thought it not consistent with the safety of jour said province, to let us 
remain there upon the terms promised us by your governors, in your 
majesty's name, we shoidd doubtless have acquiesced with any other 
reasonable proposal which might have been made to us, consistent with 
the safety of our aged parents and teniler wives and children ; anti we 
are persuaded if that had been the case, wherever we had retired, we 
should have held ourselves under the strongest obligations of gratitude 
from a thankful rememl)rance of the happiness we had enjoyed under 
your majesty's administration and gracious protection. About the 
lime of the settlement of Halifax, general Cornvvaliis, governor of Nova 
Scotia, did recjuire that we should take the oath of allegiance without 
tiie exemption before allowed us, of not bearing arms; bnt this we ab- 
solutely refused, as being an infringement of the principal condition 
upon which otir forefathers agreed to settle under the British govern- 
ment. 

" And we acquainted governor Cornwallis that if your majesty was 
not willing to continue that exemption to us, we desired liberty to eva- 
cuate the country, proposing to settle on the island of St. John's, where 
the French government was willing to let us have land, which proposal 
he at that time refused to consent to, but told us he would acquaint your 
majesty therewith, and return us an answer. But we never received. 



440 



NOTES. 



PART 1. an answer, nor was any proposal of that made to us until we were made 
^^^V"^^ prisoners. 

" After the settlement of Halifax, we suffered many abuses and in- 
sults from your majesty's enemies, more especially from tiie Indians in 
the interest of the French, by whom our cattle was killed, our houses 
pillaged, and many of us personally abused and put in fear of our lives, 
and some even carried awiiy prisoners towards Canada, solely on account 
of our resolution steadily to maintain our oatli of fidelity to the Englisli 
government, particularly Kene Leblanc (our public notary) was taken 
prisoner by the Indians wlien actually travelling in your majesty's ser- 
vice, his house pillaged, and himself carried to the French fort, from 
whence he did not recover his liberty but with great difficulty, after four 
years captivity. 

" We were likewise obliged to comply with the demand of the enemy 
made for provision, cattle, &,c. upon pain of military execution, which 
we had reason to believe the government was made sensible was not an 
act of choice on our part, but of necessity, as those in authority appear- 
ed to take in good part the representations we always made to them 
after any thing of that nature had happened. 

"Notwithstanding the many difficulties we thus laboured under, yet 
we dare appeal to the several governors, both at H.iiifax and Annapolis- 
Royal, for testimonies of our being always ready and willing to obey 
their orders, and give all the assistance in our power, either in furnish- 
ing provisions and materials, or making roads, building forts, &c. agree- 
able to your majesty's orders, and our oath of fidelity, whensoever called 
upon, or required thereunto. 

•' It was also our constant care to give notice to your majesty's com- 
manders of the danger they from time to time have been exposed to by 
the enemy's troops, and had the intelligence we gave been always 
attended t«, many lives might have been spared, particularly in tlie un- 
happy affair which befel major Noble and his brother at Grand-Pray, 
when they, with great numbers of their men, were cut off" by the enemy, 
notwithstanding the frequent advices we had given them of the danger 
they were in ; and yet we have been very unjustly accused as parties in 
that massacre. 

" And although we have been thus anxiously concerned to manifest 
our fidelity in these several respects, yet it has been falsely insinuated, 
that it had been our general practice to abet and support your majesty's 
enemies; but we trust that your majesty will not suffer suspicions and 
accusations to be received as proofs sufficient to reduce some thousands 
of innocent people, from the most happy situation to a state of the 
greatest distress and misery! No, this was far from our thoughts; wc 
esteemed our situation so happy as by no means to desire a change. 
We have always desired, and again desire that we may be permitted to 
answer our accusers in a judicial way. In the mean time permit us Sir, 
here solemnly to declare, that these accusations are utterly false and 
groundless, so far as they concern us as a collective body of people. 
It hath been always our desire to live as our fathers hath done, as faith- 
ful subjects under your majesty's royal protection, with an unfeigned 
resolution to maintain our oath of fidelity to the utmost of our power. 
Yet it cannot be expected, but that amongst us, as well as amongst other 
people, there have been some weak and false-hearted persons suscepti- 
ble of being bribed by the enemy so as to break the oath of fidelity. 
Twelve of these were outlawed in governor Shirley's proclamation be- 
fore mentioned ; but it will be found that the number of such false- 
hearted men amongst us were very few, considering our situation, the 
number of our inhabitants, and how we stood circumstanced in several 
respects : and it may easily be made appear that it was the constant 



NOTES. 441 

care of our deputies to prevent and put a stop to such wicked conduct PART I. 
when it came to their knowledge. '^.^-^•'">w/ 

" We understood that the aid granted to tlie rrencli by the inhabi- 
tants of Chignecto has been used as an argument to accelerate our ruin ; 
but we trust that your majesty will not permit the innocent to be in- 
volved with the guilty; no consequence can be justly drawn, that be- 
cause those people yielded to tiie threats and persuasions of tiie enemy, 
we siiould do the same. They were situated so far from Halifax as to be 
in a great measure out of the protection of the English government, 
which was not our case; we were separated from tliem by sixty miles 
of uncultivated land, and had no other connexion witl> them than what 
is usual with neighbours at sucii a distance; and we can truly say we 
looked on their defection from your majesty's interest with great pain 
and anxiety. Nevertheless, not long before our being made prisoner.?, 
the house in which we kept our contracts, records, deeds, 8ic. were in- 
vested with an armed force, and all our papers violently carried away, 
none of which have to this d.iy been returned us, whereby we are in a 
great measure deprived of means of making our innocency and t!ie just- 
ness of our complaints appear in their true light. 

" Upon our sending a remonstrance to the governor and council of 
the violence tliat had been offered us by the seizure of our jjapers, and 
of the groundless fears the government appeared to be umler on our 
account, by their taking away our ai ms, no answer was returned us ; but 
those who had signed tjie remonstrance, and some time after si.\ty 
more, in all about eighty of our elders, wei-e summoned to appear be- 
fore the governor and council, wliicli they immediately complied with, 
and it was required of them that tliey shoidd take the oath of allegiance 
without the exemption, which, during a course of near fifty years, had 
been granted to us and to our fathers, (,f not being obliged to bear 
arms, and which was the principal condition upon which our ancestors ■ 
agreed to remain in Nova Scotia, when the rest of the French inhabi- 
tants evacuated the country, which, as it was contrary to our inclination 
and judgment, we thought ourselves engaged in duty absolutely to re- 
fuse. Nevertheless, we freely offered, ami would gladly have renewed, 
our oath of fidelity, but this was not accepted of, and wc were all im- 
mediately made prisoners, and were told by the governor, that our 
estates, both real and personal, were forfeited for your majesty's use. 
As to those who remained at home, they wevc, summoned to appear 
before the commanders in the forts, which, we showing some fear to 
comply with, on the account of the seizure of our pajiers, and impri- 
sonment of so many of our elders, we had the greatest assurance given 
us that there was no other design but to make us renew our former oath 
of fidelity ; yet as soon as we were within the fort, the same judgment 
was passed on us as had been passed on our brethren at Halifax, and 
we were also made prisoners. 

" Thus, notwithstanding the solemn grants made to our fathers by 
general Philips, and the declaration made by governor .Shirley and Mr, 
Mascarine in your majesty's name, that it was your majesty's resolution 
to protect and maintain all such of us as should continue in their duty 
and allegiance to your majesty, in the quiet and peaceable possession of 
their settlements, and the enjoyment of all their rights and privileges, 
as your majesty's subjects ; we found ourselves at once deprived of 
our estates and liberties, without any judicial process, or even without 
any accusers appearing against us, and this solely grounded on mistaken 
jealousies and false suspicions that we were inclinable to take part with 
your majesty's enemies. But we again declare that that accusation is 
groundless ; it was always our fixed resolution to maintain to the utmost 
of our power the oath of fidelity which we had taken, not only from a 
sense of indispensable duty, but also because we were well satisfied with 

Vol. I. — 3 K. 



442 



NOTES. 



PAKT I. our situation under your majesty's government and protection, and did 
i^^^-v"^^ not tliMik it .:oii!(l iie betU'red b_\- any chani^e wliicli could L-e proposed 
to us. It has also been falsel)' insinuated that we held the opinion that 
we mig'lit be absolved from our oath so as to break it willi impunity; 
but this we likeuise solcnuil} declare to be a false accusation, and which 
we plainly evinced, b) our esposing ourselves to so great losses and 
sufferings, rather than lake the oatii proposed to llie governor and 
council, because we ajiprehended we could not in conscience comply 
therewilh. 

•'Thus we, our ancient parents and grand parents, (men of great in- 
tcgrily an<l ajiproved fidi lii\ lo yonr majrsty,) and our iiuiocent wives 
and ihildrtn, tiecame the uniiapp\ victinis to tnose groundless fears : 
we were D'ansported into the English coloiiies,and this was done in so 
much haste, and with so little reg.ird to our necessities and the tenderest 
ties of nature, that from tht- most social enjoy nients and affluent cir- 
cumstances, many found themselves di-Slitute of the necessaries of life: 
Parents w<ie sejjarated fi'om children, and husbands from wives, some 
of whom have not to this day met ag.iin ; and we were so crowded in the 
transport vessels, that we had not room even for all our bodies to lay 
down at once, and consequently were preventecl from carrying with us 
pro|5er necessaries, especially for the support and comfort of the aged 
and wedc, many of whom quickly ended their misery with tluir lives. 
And even those amongst us who had sulfered deeply from )0ur majesty's 
enemies, cm account of i heir attachment to your majesty's government, 
were equally involved in the common calamity, of which Hc'.e Lablane, 
the notary public before mentioned, is a remarkable instance He was 
seiz' •', ''oufiui d, and >rought awav among tire rest of tlie people, and 
his family, cojisisting of twenty children, and about one hundred a7id fifty 
grand children, were scattered in different colonies, so that he ivas put 
on shore at J\'ew York with only his wife and tiuo youngest children, in 
an inhrm suue of health, ti-om u lieu'e iit joined iliree more of his 
children at Philadelphia, where he died without any more notice being 
taken of him than any of us, notwithstanding his many years labour and 
deep sufferings for your majesty's service. 

•'The miseries we have since endured are scarce sufficiently to be 
cxjjressed, being reduced for a livelihood to toil and hard labour in ;i 
southern clime, so disagreeable to our constitutions, that most of us 
have been prevented by sickness from procuring the necessary stibsist- 
ence for our families, and therefore are threatened with that which we 
esteem the greatest aggravation of all our sufferings, even of having 
our children forced from us, and bound out to strangers, and exposed 
to contagious distempers unknown in our native country. 

" 'I'his, compared with the affluence and ease we enjoyed, shows our 
condition to be extremely wretched. We have already seen in this 
province of Pennsylvania two hundred and fifty of our people, which is 
more than half the number that were landed here, perish through misery 
and various diseases. In this great distress and misery, we have, under 
God, none but your majesty to look to yvith hopes of relief and i-edress : 
We therefore hereby implore your gracious protection, and request you 
may be pleased to let the justice of our complaints be truly and impar- 
tially enquired into, and that your majesty would please to grant us such 
relief as in your justice and clemency you will think our case requires, 
and we shall hold ourselves bound to pray," &c. 

This pathetic appeal of the Acadians had not the least effect with the 
British government. When Jasper Mauduit, agent of the province of 
Massachusetts, represented to Mr. Grenvllle, the British minister, that 
liis most Christian majesty, looking upon the Acadians as of the number 
of those who had been his most faithful subjects, had signified his wll- 



NOTES. ^43 

lingness to order transports for conveying them to France, from the PART I. 
British provinces, Mr. Rrenville immediately said — "that cannot be — v^^-v-^k,' 
that is contniry to our acts of navigation — how can the Frencli court 
send ships to our colonies?" (See letter of Jasper M.iuduit, dated Dec. 
1768, to the Speaker of tiie Massacliusetts House of Representatives— 
m the vol. of the Mass. Hist. Col!, for 1799.) 



(NOTK G. p. 113.) 

'■'The English made, in 1745, an important conquest, which they 
considered as an ample indemnification for the losses wiiich the allies 
had suffered in the low countries: it was that of Cape Breton," Sec, 
Koch. Histoive Ahregie des Traites de Paix. \ ol. ii. 

In the negotiations of 1748, Franct- prescribed the restitution of Louis- 
bourg as the first article of a pacifii-alion. It was the first point taken 
up by the plenipotentiaries at Aix laCliapelle ; and the British minister 
stated at once tlie readiness of Englaiul to restore it, for certain equi- 
valents. We have the following account in that instructive work, His- 
toire de la Diplomatie Francuise, (b. v. vol. 5.) 

" A memoir was sent by the French court to the Count St. Severin, 
its minister at Aix la Chapelle, upon the indispensable necessity of Cape 
Breton to France, and upon tlie fatal consequences of leaving that 
island in the hands of the English, in relation to the free trade of Canada 
and Louisiana, and the general trade of the other powers of Europe." 
" It will be the more necessary," said the official instructions, " to shew 
merely a moderate wish to recover the island, as we know that England 
has it not much at heart to retain her conquest. The Count St S^vf-rin 
tnay then give the Earl of Sandwich to understand, that the loss of 
Cape Breton is less important in itself, than on account of the stress 
laid upon it by the public opinion in France; and that the king does 
not attach so much consequence to I lie matter himself, as not to prefer 
an equivalent in the low coimtries," &c. 

It is stated in the work from which T have made these quotation.?, 
that the British court proposed to France, in 1755, that the whole 
southern bank of the river St. Lawrence should remain iminha/iited, and 
the lakes unappropriated. " The pretext of the war of 1756," says the 
same work, "on the part of England, was the encroa'Imient of the 
French on the limits of Acadia, and some acis of violence committed on 
the Ohio; but the real motive was to avail herself of the supjjosed 
weakness of the cabinet of Versailles, to destroy the French navy, and 
to avenge the defeats of Fontenoy and of Lawfeldt. (Vol. vi. b. 1.) 



(NOTE H. p. 119 ) 

Bhaddock's papers all fell into the hands of the French. In the year 
1757, there was made and published in Philadelphia, a translanon of 
three French volumes fiMiiid on board a Frencli privateer, and contain- 
ing authenticated copies of those papers. Tlie\ throw great light upon 
the origin of his expedition, and do not redound to the creilit of the 
British government for good faith in its negotiation with France, preli- 
minary to the war of 1756. A few extracts from the instructions given 
to Braddock, and his correspondence with his government, may serv^ 
to amuse the American reader. 



444 



NOTES, 



PART I. " His Uoyal Highness tlie Duke of Cumberland," says the letter of ii;- 
\,^'>r>^/ strurtions of November 25, 1754, " recommends to you that it he con- 
stantly observed among the troops under your commund, to be particu- 
larly careful that they be not thrown into a panic by the Indians, with 
which they are yet unacquainted, whom the French will certainly cm- 
ploy io frighten them. His Koyal Highness recommends to you the visit- 
ing your posts night and day, that your colonels and other officers be 
careful to do it, and tiiat you yourself frequently set them the example, 
and give all your troops plaiidy to understand tlint no excuse will be ud- 
mitledfor any surprise whatsoever.'''' 

Fart of a letter from General Braddock, to the Hon. Thomas Robinson. 

"Alexandria, 19th of April, 1755. 

"Governor Shirley will acquaint you, sir, of the expense of JVew Eng-- 
land upon tiie prodigious levy of men that has been made in these go- 
vernments,/ur the enterprises of tlie north, the other governors have done 
very little, or rather nothing. I cannot but take the liberty to repre- 
sent to you the necessity of laying a tax upon all his itiajesty's dominions 
in .America, agreeably to the resiUt of conncil, for reimbursing the great 
sums that must be advanced for the service and interest of the colonies 
in this important crisis." 

From the same to the same, 

« Fort Cumberland, (at Will's Creek) 

June 5th, 1755. 

" I have at last assembled all tlie troops destined for the attack of 
Fort du Qiiesnc, which amount to two thousand ett'eclive men, of which 
' lliere are eleven hundred furnished by the southern provinces, who have- 
so Hale covrage and disposition, that scarce any military service can be ex- 
pected from them, though I have employed the best officers to form 
them." 

"I desired ilr. B. Franklin, Post-Master of Pennsylvania, who has 
great credit in tlie provinces, to hire me one himdred and fifty wag-- 
gons and the number of horses necessary, which he did witli so much 
goodness and readiness, that it is almost the first instance of integrity, 
address, and ability that I have seen in all these provinces." 



(NOTE I. p. 125.) 

Uis Hx-cellcncy the Commander in Chief, the Eaii of Loudon, thougk 
of a very lordly carri.age towards the provincials, was unable to stifle 
the petulance of their press. The newspapci-s of their large towns 
carped and sneered at his operations, in a manner that might have pro- 
voked tlie master of fewer legions to exeri a vigour beyond the law. 
The following piece published in a New-York gazette, during his pre- 
sence in that city, shows the boldness of the censorsliip exercised over 
the management of the British commanders, and furnishes a good 
sketch of the first campaigns of the war. 

Extract of a letten^ from JVew York, to a gentleman in London, dated J\'ew- 
York, August 26, 1757 
" The situation of aflfairs in America, grow more and more danger- 
ous; and what makes us despair of seeing things mend, is that, by I 



NOTES. 445 

know not v.'liat fatality of conduct in our commanders, the more we are PART I. 
strengthened with land forces from Great Britain, tl)e more ^n-ound we v.,^-v/-^^ 
lose against the French, vvliose number of rcgidar troops is, according 
to the best information we can get here, much inferior to ours. 

"To give yoti some idea of this, all tlie success we can pretend to 
boast of in the course of this war, iiappened in the two Jirst years of it, 
when we had not a fourth part of tlie regular troops we now have, and 
the French had at least an equal number in Canada and Louisbourg. 

"Our campaign in 1755, opened with an expedition against the en- 
croachments of the French in Nova-Scotia, with about four liundred 
troops of the (hi'ce regiments ])osted there, and two thousand New- 
England irregulars, fitted out from Boston ; which was conducted iii 
such a manner, that the French forts upon the isthmus were soon sur- 
rendered to us J their garrisons transported to Louisbourg ; one of their 
forts upon the river St. Joiin, abandoned by them, and their settlements 
about it broken up ; and in the same year our own forliHcalions were 
advanced towards Montreal as far as lake St. Sacrament, now lake 
George, as in the preceding jear they had likewise begun to be upon 
the river Kennebeck, towards the metropolis of Canada: — And the 
French general Ueiskau, who came from France that year with about 
three thousand troops, and had begun his marcli to invest Oswego, was 
prevented from making an attempt upon it, and defeated in his attack 
upon our camp at Lake George ; and in the year 1756, a large party of 
French regulars, Canadians and Indians, which attacked by surprise :v 
party of our batteaux men, upon the river Onondago, were entirely de- 
feated by an inferior number of them. 

" No sooner were our forces increased by those which arrived here 
from Europe with general Abercrombie, in June, 1756, but things took 
& very different turn. Though timely information was given, that a 
large French camp was forined within about thirty miles of Oswego, 
with intent speedily to attack it; yet, by some unaccountable delay to 
send it a reinforcement, that most material place was lost ; General 
Webb, who did at last embark with one for its relief, not setting out 
till two dajs before it was taken. 

" Our next misfortune, which followed close upon the heels of this, 
was, that when our general had got as far as the great carrying-place, 
at Oneida, (a pass in the country of the Six Nations,) which was so 
strongly forlified, and so inaccessible to the enemy's artillery, that it 
might have defied the whole French army to take it, he demolished 
the fort and works there in a few days, and retired with his forces to a 
place called the German-Flats, which is sixty miles nearer Albany, and 
soon after to Schenectady, which is no more than seventeen miles frora 
that city ; and thereby not only abandoned the Six Nations of Indians, 
and their country, to the enemy, but left ihe French a free passage 
from Oswego, through the Moliawks river, to Schenectady. — And what 
is still more extraordinary in this, is, that whilst tlie general was de- 
molishing the works at this carrying-place, and retiring back to Sche- 
nectady, the P'rench were as bu.sy in demolishing the works at Oswego, 
and retiring from thence back towards Montreal. 

" This precipitate retreat was immediately followed by as fatal a de- 
lay ; for though we had a suflicient force ready to have proceeded that 
year in our expedition against Crown-Point, yet we wasted the whole 
season in entrenching at Lake George, and fortifying Fort William- 
Henry there ; the consequence of which was, that we not only lost a 
favourable opportunity for making an attempt against Crown-Point, but 
paid for that neglect, by the loss of Fort William-Henry itself, this 
year. 

" This closed our operations in 1756 : The beginning of this year was 
spent in making preparations for the expedition against Louisbourg, 



44U NOTES. 

PART T. Wiiich took us up till the latter end of June ; tlicn our transports sailed 
, ^^-^^.^^ , trom heiice for Halifax, with about six thousand regular troops; and in 
their ])as.s;ige most miraculously escaped being taken by the French 
ships, which, we are informed, had been about five days before cruiz- 
ing oti' thai harbour. After s])ending about five weeks at Halifax in 
holding councils of war, the result of them was, to lay aside the expedi- 
tion against l-ouisbourg. 

" Wliilst we were employed in making this dangerous passage to Ha- 
lifax, and holding councils of war there, Mons. Montcalm took the op- 
portunity of lord Loudon's absence, and proceeded from Quebec to 
Crown-Point, with about ten thousand men, consisting of regular troops, 
Canadians, and Indians; from whence he made Fort William-Henry a 
visit, whic^h he took, after a siege of about five or six days, and demo- 
lished : disabled the garrison, wiiich consisted of about two thousand 
three hundred men, from serving against tlie French for the space of 
eighteen months; made himself mastei' of our magazines of provision 
and stores ; the former of svhich were of very great service to the ene- 
my ; and secured the entire possession of thi' lakes between Lake- 
George and Montreal ; finished this business, and retired with his 
army, before the return of lord Loudon with his troops from Halifax, 
which are expected here every day. 

" Such is the present state of our affairs, the fruits of our two last 
years inacti\e campaigns, of our want of proper intelligence, and the 
little use we make of what we do get ! we find by woful experience, 
that our great numbers of regular ti'oops have been of no service, lor 
want of proper management; the French carry all before them: and 
what the next year will produce, God only knows; I tremble to 
think." 



(NOTE J. p. 131.) 

EvEUT account of these campaigns, which was published in England, 
contained some fabricated or distorted anecdotes, lending to bring ri- 
dicule or contem[)l upon the prcnincials. In Knox's Historical Jour- 
nal,* for instance, the most consiikrable and esteemed work respecting 
the operations in America from 1756 to 1760, I find such stories as the 
two whicli I am lo quote, and which have neither verisimilitude nor 
poignancy to compensate for their falsehood. 

" Mai-ch 29, 1758 — Two sail of ships were discovered to cross the 
basin below, anil I'un up Moose and Bear rivers, which being unusual 
for British sliips, a boat was sent down for intelligence and to watch 
their motions. The boat returned, and brought up the masters of the 
two vessels; they came from fort Cumberland, and ire bound to Boston; 
by them we are informed there is an eml)argo l.iid on all the ports of 
New England, New York, Halifax, &.c. &c. We hear of great prepa- 
rations for opeiling the campaign, ihat there are more troops expected 
irom Europe, and that the jirovince of Massachusetts is raising a large 
body of provincials to co-operate v\ith tiie regulars; the masters of 
these sloops say, that all is well at Chegnecto, and also at Fort Iiidward 
anil Fort Sackville, where they have lately been; these men farther add, 
that it was reported at Boston, thai the p.irticular department of the 

* Historical Joimvil of the Campaigns in Nor'h .America for the 
years 1757, 1758 1759, and 1760, by captain John Knox : dedicated by 
permission, to General Amherst. 2 vols. 4to. 



NOTES. 447 

New Englaiul troops this campaign, would be the reduction of Canada; PART I. 
tliis was malltT of grc-at niirui lo us, and an ofii^er who was present, v^,-^^^^^^ 
Immorousiv replied, Jlud lei the regulars remain in the different forts and 
garrisons, to hew tuood and dig sand, oJc. then the French iviU be finely hum- 
bled in America.'"' Vol. i. p. 112. 

"December 1st. 1758. — We weighed this morning about eight 
o'clock, and attempted to get out into the bay ; but not consulting the 
proper time of tide, we were obliged to ptit ba-k, and come to an an- 
chor; about noon we weighed again with the tide of ebb, and little 
wind falling, with an agitated sea, occasioned by conflicting cui'rents, 
our transport missed stays, and we narrowly escaped being wrecked 
tipon a lee shore, where the vessel would probably iiave bet- n dashed 
to pieces, the western side of the entrance being a complete ledge of 
rocks, the master instantly fell upon his knees, crying out — • What 
shall we do .'' I vow 1 fear we shall all be lost, let us go to prayers ; wiiat 
can we do dear Jonathan ?' Jonathan went forward muttering lo him- 
self, ' do — I vow Ebenezer, I don't know what we shall do any more 
than thyself;' when fortunately one oi our soldiers, who was a thorough 
bred seaman, and had served several ycar.s on board a ship of war, and 
afterwards in a pri\ateer, hearing and seeing the helpless state of mind 
which our poor JVeiu England men ivere under, and our sloop drivuig to- 
wards the shore, called out, ' why d — your e)es and limi)s, — ilown 
with her sails and let her drive a — e foremost ; what the devil signifies 
your canting and praying now .'" — Ebenezer quickly taking the hint, 
called to Jonathan to lower the sails, saying, ' he vowed he believed 
that young man's advice was vei'V good. Out wished he had not deli- 
vered it so jirofiuely.' However, it answered to our wish; every thing 
that was necessary was transacted instantaneously ; the soldier gave di- 
rections, and seizing the helm, we soon recovered ourselves, cleared 
the streight, and drove into the bay stern foremost." 

Knox's Hist. Journal, vol. i. p. 217-18. 

The London newspapers were never without " extracts of letters 
from officers serving in the British army in America," which surpassed 
the formal relations of the war, in ridicule and obloquy of the Ameri- 
cans. A lampoon of this description, publislied in the London Clironi- 
cle of May, 1759, drew an answer from Dr. Franklin, which was in- 
serted in the same paper a few days afterwards. I have not seen this 
characteristic production in any collection of his works, and Itherefoie 
give it place in this volume, with the aim of wiiich it so happily co- 
incides. It evidences the staleness, as it explodes the absurdity of 
those contumelious allegations against us, whicii the same spirit that 
gave them birth at the earliest period, and has never since declined, 
now reproduces in the British Journals. 

From the London Chrovic'e. 
" Mr. CimoxicLE, 

" Sm, while the public attention is so much turned towards America, 
every letter from thence that promises new information, is pretty ge- 
nerally read ; it seems therefore the more necessary tliat c ire siu)uld 
be taken to disabuse the public, when those letters contain facts false 
in themselves, and representations injurious to bodies of people, or 
even to private persons. 

" In your paper. No. 310, I find an extract of a letter, said to be from 
a gentleman in general Abercrombie's army. As there are several 
strokes in it tendinij to render the colonies despicable, and even odious 
to the mother country, which may have ill consequences ; and no no- 
Vr,s having been taken of the injuries contained in that letter, other 



448 NOTES. 

PARTI, letters ot llie bame nature have sir.ce been publislied ; permit mete 
■_^-v^»^ niake a few observations on it. 

"The writer says, 'New -England was settled by Presbyterians and 
Independents, who took shelter there from liie persecutions of Arch- 
bisliop Laud ; — tlietj still retain their original c/iaracter, they generally hate 
the Church of England,' says he. It is very true, that if some resentment 
still remained for the hardships their fathers suffered, it miglit perhaps 
be not much wondered at; but the fact is, that the moderation of the 
present Church of England towards dissenters in old as well as New 
England, has quite effaced those impressions; the dissenters too are be- 
come less rigid and scrupulous, and tiie good will between those differ- 
ent bodies in that country, is now botli mutual and equal. 

" He goes on : ' They came out vjith a levelling spirit, and they retain it. 
They cannot bear to think that one man shoidd be exorbitantly rich, and ano- 
ther poor ; so that, except in the sea port towns, there are few great estates 
among them. This egualiiy produces also a rusticity ofmaniiers ; for in their 
language, dress, and in all their behaviour, they are more boorish than any 
tiling you eve>' saw in a certain northern latitude.' One woidd imagine trom 
this account, that those who were growing poor, plundered these who 
were growing rich, to preserve this equalit}-, and that property had no 
jirotection ; whereas, in fact, it is no where more secure than in the 
Kew England colonies, the law is no where better executed, or justice 
obtained at less expcnce. The equality he speaks of, arises first from 
a more equal distribution of lands by the assemblies in the first settle- 
ment than has been practised in the other colonies, where favourites of 
governors have olitained enormous tracts for trifling considerations, to 
the i)rcjudice botli of tlie crown revenues and the public good ; and se- 
condly, from the nature of their occupation ; luisbandmL-n with small 
tracts of land, though they may by industry maintain themselves and fa- 
milies in mediocrity, having few means of acquiring great wealth, espe- 
cially in a young colony that is to be supplied witii its cloathing, and 
many other expensive articles of consumption from the mother coun- 
try. 'I'heir dress the gentleman may be a more critical judge of, than 
I can pretend to be : all I know of it is, that they wear the manufacture 
of Britain, and follow its fashions perhaps too closely, every remark- 
able change in the mode making its appearance there within a few 
months after its invention here; a natural effc-ct of their constant inter- 
course with England, by ships arriving almost every week from the ca- 
pital, their respect for the mother country, and admiration of every 
thing that is British. But as to their language, I must beg this gentle- 
jnan's pardon, if I differ from him. His ear, accustomed periiai)s to the 
dialect practised in tlie certain northern latitudeha mentions, may not be 
qualified to judge so nicely what relates to pure English. And 1 appeal 
to all Englishmen heve, who have been acquainted with the colonists, 
whctiier it is not a common remark, that they speak the language with 
such an exactness both of expression and accent, that though you may 
know the natives of several of the counties of England, by peculiarities 
in their dialect, you cannot by that means distinguisii a North Ameri- 
can. All the new books and pamphlets worth reading, that are pub- 
lished here, in a few weeks aie transmitted and found there, where 
lliere is not a man or woman born in the country but wliat can read : 
and it must, I should think, be a plea.sing reflection to those who write 
cither for the benefit of the present age or of posterity, to find their 
audience increasing with the increase of our colonies ; and their lan- 
guage extending itself beyond the narrow bounds of these islands, to a 
continent larger than all Europe, and to a future empire as fully peo- 
pled, which Britain may probably one day possess in those vast western 
regions. 

" But the gentleman makes more injurious comparisons than these : 



NOTES. 449 

' 'If iut latitude,' he says, ' has this advantage over them, that it has pro- PART I. 
duced sharp, acute men, fit for war or learning, whereas, the others are \,^r>r^^ 
remarkat)!}- simple or silly, and blunder eternally. We have 600U of 
their militia, which the general would willingly exchange for 2000 re- 
gulars. They are for ever marring some one or other of our plans, 
when sent to execute them. They can, indeed, some of them at least, 
range in the woods ; but 300 Indians with their yell, throw 3000 of 
them in a panic, and then they will leave nothing to the enemy to do, 
for they will shoot one another; and in the woods our regulars are 
afraid to be on a command with them on that very accotmt' I doubt, 
Mr. Chronicle, that this paragraph, when it comes to be read in Ame- 
rica, will have no good effect; and rather increase that inconvenient 
disgust which is too apt to arise between the troops of different corps, or 
countries, who are obliged to serve together. Will not a New-England 
officer be apt to retort and say, what foundation have you for this odi- 
ous distinction in favour of the officers from your certain northern lati- 
tude? They may, as you say, he Jit for learning ; but, surely, the return 
of your first general, with a well appointed and sufficient force, from 
his expedition against Louisbourg, without so much as seeing the 
place, is not the most shining proof of his talents for -war. And no one 
will say his plan was marred by ics, for we were not with him. — Was his 
successor who conducted the blundering attack, and inglorious retreat 
from Ticonderoga, a New-England man, or one of that certain latitude ? 
— Then as to the comparison between regulars and provincials, will not 
the latter remark, that it was 2000 New-England provincials, with 
about 150 regulars, that took the strong fort of Beausejour, in the be- 
ginning of the war; though in the accounts transmitted to the English 
Gazette, the honour was claimed by the regulars, and little or no no- 
tice taken of the others. — That it was the provincials who beat general 
Dieskau, with his regulars, Canadians, and 'yelhng Indians', and sent 
him prisoner to England. — That it was a provincial-born officer,* with 
American batteauxmen, that beat the French and Indians on Oswego ri- 
ver. — That it was the same officer, with provincials, who made that 
long and admirable march into the enemy's country, took and destroy- 
ed fort Frontenac, with the whole French fleet on the lakes, and 
struck terror into the heart of Canada. — That it was a provincial offi- 
cer,! ^^ith provincials onlj', who made another extraordinary march 
into the enemy's country, surprized and destroyed the Indian town of 
Kittanning, bringing off the scalps of their chiefs. — That one ranging 
captain of a few provincials, Rogers, has harrassed the enemy more on 
the fronliers of Canada, and destroyed more of their men, than the 
whole army of regulars. — That it was the regulars who surrendered 
themselves, with the provincials under their command, prisoners of 
war, almost as soon as they were besieged, with the forts, fleet, and all 
the provisions and stores that had been provided and amassed at so im- 
mense an expence, at Oswego. — That it was the regulars who surren- 
dered fort William-Henry, and suffered themselves to be butchered 
and scalped with arms in their hands. — That it was the regulars under 
Braddock, who were thrown into a panic by the ' yells of 3 or 400 In- 
dians,' in their confusion shot one another, and, with five times the 
force of the enemy, fled before them, destroying all their own stores, 
ammunition, and provision ! — These regidar gentlemen, will Xhe provin- 
cial rangers add, may possibly be afraid, as they say they are, to be on a 
command ivich us in the woods ; but when it is considered, that from all 
past experience, the chance of our shooting them is not as one to a 
hundred, compared with that of their being shot by the enemy ; may it 

* Colonel Bradstreet. + Colonel Armstrong, of Pennsylvania. 

Vol. I.— 3 L 



450 NOTES. 

PART I. not be suspected, that what they give as the very account of their fear 
^^..y,-^, and unwillingness to venture out with us, is only the very excuse ,- and 
ttiata concern for their scalps weiglismoie wilhlliem than a regard for 
their honour. 

" Siich as these, Sir, I imagine may be the reflections extorted by such 
provocation, from the provincials in general. But the New-England 
men in particular, will have reason to resent the remarks on their re- 
duction of Louisbourg. Your writer proceeds, ' Indeed they are all 
very ready to make their boast of taking Louisbourg, in 1745; but if 
people were to be acquitted or condt nuud according to the propriety 
and wisdom of their plans, and not according to their success, the per- 
sons that undertook the siege, merited little praise : for I have heard 
officers, who assisted at it, say, never was any thing more rash ; for had 
one single part of their plan fiiiled, or had the French made the for- 
tieth part of the resistance then that they have made now, every soul of 
the New-Englanders must have fallen in the trenches. The garrison 
was weak, sickly, and destitute of provisions, and disgusted, and there- 
fore became a ready prey ; and, when they returned to France, were 
decimated for their gallant defence.' Where then is the glory arising 
from thence .' — After denying his facts, • that the garrison was weak, 
wanted provisions, made not a fortieth part of the resistance, were de- 
cimated,' &c. the New-England men will ask this regular gentleman, if 
the j)lace was well fortihed, and had (as it really had) a numerous gar- 
rison, was it not at least brave to attack it with a handful of raw undis- 
ciplined militia ? If the garrison was, as you say, ' sickly, disgusted, des- 
titute of provisions, and ready to become a prey,' was it not prudent to 
seize that opportunity, and put the nation in possession of so important 
a fortress, at so small an e.xpence ? So that if you will not :dlow the en- 
terprize to be, as we think it was, both brave and prudent, ought you 
not at least to grant it was either one or the other ? But is there no merit 
on this score in the people; who, though at first so greatly divided, as 
to the making or forbearing the attempt, that it was carried in the af- 
firmative, by the small majority oi one vote only ; yet when it was once 
resolved on, unaniinonsly prosecuted the design, and prepared the 
means with the greatest zeal and diligence; so that the whole equip- 
ment was completely ready before the season would permit the execu- 
tion .'' Is there no merit of praise in laying and executing their plan so 
well, that, as you have confessed, not a si7igle part of it failed .' If the 
plan w^as destitute of 'propriety and wisdom,' would it not have re- 
quired the sharp acute men of the northern latitude to execute it, that by 
supplying its deficiencies they might give it some chance of success;' 
But if such 'remarkably silly, simple, blundering 7na?'/)/ans,' as you 
say we are, could execute this plan, so that not a migle part of it failed, 
does it not at least show that the plan itself must he laid with some ' wis- 
dom and propriety ?' — Is there no merit in the ardour with which all de- 
grees and ranks of people quitted their private att'airs, and ranged 
themselves under the banners of their king, for the honour, safety, and 
advantage of their country .' Is there no merit in the profound secrecy 
guarded by a whole people, so that the enemy had not the least intelli- 
gence of the design, till they saw the fleet of transports cover the sea 
before their port ? — Is there none in the indefatigable labour the troops 
went through during the siege, performing the duty both of men and 
horses; the hardships they patiently suffered for want of tents and 
other necessaries; the readiness with which they learnt to move, direct, 
and manage cannon, raise batteries, and form approaches; the bravery 
with which they sustained sallies; and finally, in their consenting to 
stay and garrison the place after it was taken, absent from their busi- 
ness and families, till troops could be brought from England for that 
purpose, though they undertook the service on a promise of being dis- 



N0TE8. 4$1 

charged as soon as it was over, were unprovided for so long an ab- PART I. 

sence, and actually suffered ten times more loss by mortal sickness, . ^ ^_ ^ -^ _. 

through want of necessaries, than they suffered from tlie arms of the 

enemy ? The nation, however, had a sense of this undertaking different 

from the unkind one of this gentleman. At the treaty of peace, the 

possession of Louisbourg was tbimd of great advantage to our affairs in 

Europe; and iftlie brave men that made the acquisition for us were 

not rewarded, at least they were praised. Envy may continue avvhile to 

cava! aiut detract, but public vv tue will in tlie end obtain esteem; and 

hontst impartiality in this and future ages, will not fail doing justice to 

merit. 

" Your £;'entlemun writer thus decently goes on. ' The most substantial 
men of most of the provinces, are ciiildn n or grandchildren ot those 
that came here at the king's e.xpence ; that is, thieves, highwaymen, 
and robbers.' Being probably a military gentleman, tliis, and Uierefore 
a person of nice honour, if any one should tell him in the piuinest lan- 
guage, that what he here says is an absolute falsehood, challenges and 
cutting of throats might immediately ensue I shall therefore only re- 
fer him to his own account in this same letter, of the peopling of New-Eng- 
land, which he says, with more truth, was by Puritans who fled thither 
for shelter from the persecutions of Archbishop Luud. Is there not a 
wide difference between removing to a distant country to enjoy the ex- 
ercise of religion, according to a man's conscience, and his being trans- 
ported thither by a law, as a puiiishment for his crimes ? This contra- 
diction we therefore leave the gentleman and himself \.o settle as well as 
tbej can between them. One would think from his account, that the 
provinces were so many colonies from Newgate. Tiie truth is, not 
oidy Laud's persecution, but the other public troubles in the following 
reigns, induced many thousand families to leave B'-ngland, and settle in 
the plantations. During the predominance of the parliament, many 
royalists removed or were banished to Virginia and Barbadoes, who af- 
terwards spread into the other settlements : The Catholics sheltered 
themselves in Marylaml. At the restoration, many of the deprived non- 
conformist ministers, with their families, friends and hearers, went over. 
Towards the end of Charles the Second's reign, and during James the 
Second's, the Dissenters again flocked into America, driven by persecu- 
tion, and dreading the introduction of popery at home. Then the high 
price or reward of labour in the colonies, and want of artisans there, 
drew over many, as well as the occasion of commerce ; and when once 
people begin to migrate, every one has his little sphere of acquaintance 
and connections, which he draws after him, by invitation, motives of in- 
terest, praising his new settlement, and other encouragements. The 
'most substantial men' are descendants of those early settlers ; new 
comers not having yet had time to raise estates. The practice of send- 
ing convicts thither, is modern ; and the same indolence of temper and 
habits of idleness that make people poor and tempt them to steal in 
England, continue with them when they are sent to America, and must 
there have the same effects, where all who live well, owe their subsist- 
ence to labour and business ; and where it is a thousand times more diffi- 
cult than here, to acquire wealth without industry. Hence the instances 
of transported thieves advancing their fortunes in the colonies, are ex- 
tremely rare ; if there really is a single instance of it, which I very much 
doubt ; but of their being advanced there to the gallows, the instances 
are plenty. Might they not as well have been hanged at home ? — We 
call Britain the mother country ; but what good mother besides, woidd in- 
troduce thieves and criminals into the company of her children, to cor- 
rupt and disgrace them ? — And how cruel is it, to force, by the high 
hand of power, a particular country of your subjects, who have not de- 
served such usage, to receive your outcasts, repealing all the laws they 



452 NOTES, 

PART I. make to prevent their admission, and then reproach lL*ni with the dc- 
. . tested mixture you liave made : ' The emptying ilieir jails into our set- 

tlements,' says a writer of that country, ' is an insidi and contempt, the 
cruelest perhaps that ever one people offered another; and would not 
be equalled even by emptying their jakes on our tables.' 

'• I'he letter I have been considering, Mr. Chronicle, is followed by 
another, in your paper of Tuesday the 17th past, said to he from an officer 
iv/io atte7ided Bvigadxer-^encvdl Forbes, in his march from Philadelpiiia to 
fori Du Quesne; but written probably by the same gentleman who wrote 
the former, as it seems calculated to raise the character of the officers of 
the certain nortliern latitude, at the expence of the reputation of the cole- 
iiies, and the provincial forces. — According to this letter writer, if the 
Pennsylvanians granted large supplies, and raised a great body of troops 
for the last campaign, it was not obedience to his majesty's commands, 
signitied by his minister, Mr. Pitt, zeal for tiie king's service, or even a 
regard for their own safety ; but it was owing to the * general's proper 
management of the Quakers, and other parlies in the province.' The 
withdrawing of the Indians from the French interest by negociating a 
peace, is all ascribed to the general, and not a word said to the honour 
of the poor Quakers, who first set those negociations on foot, or of 
honest Frederick Post, that compleated them with so much ability and 
success. Even the little merit of the Assembly's making a law to regu- 
late carriages, is imputed to the general's ' multitude of letters.' Then 
he tells us, ' innumerable scouting parties had been sent out during a 
long period, both by the general and Col. Bouquet, towards fort Da 
Quesne, to catch a pi'isoner if possible, for intelligence, but never got 
any.' — How happened that ? — Why, ' it was the provincial troops, that 
were constantly employed in that service,' and they, it seems, never do 
any thing they are ordered to do. — That, however, one would think, 
might be easily remedied^ by sending regidars with them, who of course 
must command them, and may see that ihey do their duty. A'o ,- The 
regidars are afraid of being shot hy the provincials in a panic — Then sen<l 
' all regulars. — Jiye ; That was 7uhat the co£o7iel rtsoUed upon. — 'Intelli- 

gence was now wanted, (sa3s rhe letter-writer) colonel Bouquet, whose 
attention to business was [only] very considerable [that is, not quite so 
great as the general's, for he was not of the northern latitude] was deter- 
mined to send NO more provincials a scouting.' — And how did he exe- 
cute his determination ? Why, by sending 'Major Grant of the High- 
landers, with seven hundred men, three hundred of them Highlanders, 
THE nEST Americans, Virginians, and Pennsylvanians !' — N' ■ blunder this, 
in our writer ; hnt a. mi-sfortime ; and he is nevertheless one of those 

* acute sharps men who are 'Jit for learning .'' — And how did this major 
and seven hundred men succeed in catching the prisoner? — Why, their 
' march to fort Du Quesne was so conducted the surprize was co?npleat.' — 
Perhaps you may imagine, gentle reader, that this was a surprize of the 
enemy — No such matter. They knew every step of his motions, and 
had, every man of them, left their fires and huts in the fields, and re- 
tired into the fort. — But the major and his 700 men, tliey were snr. 
prized; first to find no body there at night, and next to find themselves 
surrounded and cut to pieces in the morning ; two or three hundrr^d 
being killed, drowned, or taken prisoners, and among the latter the 
major himself. Those who escaped were also surprized at their own 
good fortune; and the whole army was surprized at the major's bad 
management. — Thus the surprize was indeed compleat ,• — but not the dis- 
grace ; \'ov provincials tvere thereto lay the blame on. The misfortune 
(we must not call it misconduct) of the major was owing, it seems, to an 
un-named, and perhaps, unknown provincial officer, who, it is said, 

* disobeyed his orders and quited his post.' Whence a formal conclu- 
sion is drawn, 'that a planter is not to be taken from the plough and 
made an officer in a day.' — Unhappy provincials ! If success attends 



NOTES. 



453 



where you are joined with the regulars, tliey claim all the honour, PART I. 
tliougli not'^ tenih part of your number. If disgrace, it is all yours, y^^^^ -^_- 
thoui.;h you happen to be but a small part of the whole, and have not 
llie command ; as if regulars were in their nature- invincible, wiien not 
mixed with provincials, and provincials of no kind of value without re- 
gulars! Happy is it for you that yon were neither present at Preston 
Pans nor Falkirk, at the faint attempt against Rochtort, the rout of St. 
Cas, or the hasty retreat from Martinico. Every thing that went wrong, 
or did not go right, would have ijeen ascribed to you. Our commanders 
would iiave been saved the labour of writing long apologies for their 
conduct. It might have been sufficient to ssty , provincials -were -with 
us } 

A NEW-ENGLANDMAN." 
May 9, 1759. 



(NOTE K. p. 168.) 

With respect tothe character of the royal governors, See Franklin's 
piece on the Causes of the American Discontents, Burke's Speech on 
Am. Ta.xation, and most of the English Histories passim, in which our 
colonial affairs are introduced. The royal governors were, in several 
instances, detected in the grossest peculation, and almost universally 
involved themselves, by their spirit of tyranny, religious bigotry, or 
rapacity, in quarrels with the provinces over which they were placed. 
Tlie frequent and sudden prorogation, or dissolution, of the colonial 
assemblies, by which they vainly endeavoured to worry the people into 
submission, was one of the causes of those quarrels. They transmitted 
to the British ministry, accounts of their provinces, either entirely 
false, or miserably imperfect. " Governments," says Smith, the histo- 
rian of New York, addressing the earl of Halifax, 1736, " have been 
too often bestowed upon men of mean parts, and indigent circumstances. 
The former were incapable of the task, and the latter too deeply en- 
grossed by the sordid views of private interest, either to pursue or 
study our common weal. The wor.st consequences have resulted from 
this measure, &c. All attempts for conciliating tiie friendship of the 
Indians, promoting the fur trade, securing the command of the lakes, 
protecting the frontiers, and extending our possessions far into the in- 
land country, have too often given place to party projects and contracted 
schemes, equally useless and shameful. If the governors of these plan- 
tations had formerly been animated by generous and extensive views, 
the long projected designs of our common enemy might have been 
many years ago supplanted at a trifling expense," &c. I sliould sug- 
gest another source of oppression and disaffection, akin to that of the 
conduct of the governors, which is thus stated by Stokes, a zealous 
royalist, in his View of the Constitution of the British Colonies in Ame- 
rica, (1 vol. 8vo. Lond. 1784:) " There was a fatal practice, from the first 
establishment, which greatly weakened the king's cause in all the Ame- 
rican colonies, I mean the bestowing almost every lucrative office in 
America, that could be exercised by deputy, on some person residing 
in Great Britain, who employed a deputy, with a slender allowance, to 
execute the office for them : this deputy had neither weight in the pro- 
vince, nor any interest in the government under which he lived," &c. 

The altercations between Lord Cornbury, as governor of New Jer- 
sey, and the legislature of that state, at the beginning of the eighteenth 
century, may be cited as examples of the treatment to which the cole- 



454 



NOTES. 



PART I. nial assemblies were exposed, as well as of the spirit with which tiie 
^^f-V->^^ character and station of the American freeman were maintained. Corn- 
bury attempted encroachments and oppressions ; the assembly resisted 
and complained. In their first strong remonstrance, they hold this lan- 
guag-e : "Liberty is too valuable a thing to be easily parted with ; and 
when such mean inducements procure such violent endeavours to tear 
it from us, we must take le.ive to say, they huve neither heads, hearts, 
nor soids, that are not moved with the miseries of their country, and 
are not forward with their utmost power lawfully to redress them. AVe 
conclude, by advising the governor to consider what it is that princi- 
pally engages the affections of a people, and he will find no other arti- 
fice needful than to let them be immolested in the enjoyment of what 
belongs to them of right ; and a wise man, that despises not his own 
happiness, will earnestly labour to regain their love." 

The remonstrance, which ended with this passage, was presented in 
form to the governor, by Samuel Jennings, the speaker of the house of 
assembly. Smith, the historian of New Jersey, gives an amusing ac- 
count of the interview.* 

"Jennings was undaunted, and Lord Cornbury, on his part, exacted 
the utmost decorum ; while, as speaker, he was delivering the remon- 
strance, the latter frequently interrupted him with a stop, what's that? 
&c. at the same time putting on a countenance of authority and stern- 
ness, with intention to confound him. With due submission, yet firm- 
ness, whenever interrupted, he calmly desired leave to read the pas- 
sages over again, and did it with an additional emphasis upon those 
most complaining; so that, on the second reading, they became more 
observable than before ; he at length got through ; when the governor 
told the house to attend him again on Saturday next, at 11 o'clock, to 
receive his answer. After the house was gone, Cornbury, with some 
emotion, told those with him, that Jennings hadimtmdence enoiieh to face 
then— I." ^ ^ * -^ 

The governor produced his answer, after some days ; and, as he as- 
cribed the resistance which he experienced, to the Quakers, he assailed 
them with a grossness of invective, which that society could hardly 
have expected to hear from any mouth, and much less from that of a 
chief magistrate, bred at the court of St James. " I am of opinion," 
said his lordship, "that nothing has hindered the vengeance of just 
heaven from falling on this province long ago, but the infinite mercy, 
goodness, long suffering, and forbearance of Almighty God, who has 
been abundantly provoked by the repeated crying sins of a penwrse 
generation among jcs, and more especially by the dangerous and abomi- 
nable doctrines, and the -cvicked lives and practices of a number of peo- 
ple ; some of whom, under the pretended name of Christians, have 
dared to deny the very essence and being of the Saviour of the world. 

" We find, by woful experience, that there are many men who have 
been permitted to serve on juries here, who have no regard for the 
oaths they take, especially among a sort of people, who, imder a pretence 
of conscience, refuse to take an oath ; and yet many of them, under the 
cloak of a very solemn affirmation, dare to commit the greatest enor- 
mities, especially if it be to serve a friend, as they call him. 

* See his " Flistory of the Colony of New Jersey, to the year 1721," 
for the entertaining details of the controversy between the governor 
and the assembly. The early history of this state is as edifying as that 
of any other of our confederacy. It yields the most animating lessons 
of energetic freedom and philanthropic liberality. It deserves to be 
more read than I presume it to be, and to be better digested than it is 
in the work of Smith. 



NOTES. 455 

•■' Of all the people in the world, the Quakers ought to be the last to PART I. 
complain of the hardsiiips of travelling a few nniles, who never repine ^^ ^ -^^. 
at the trouble and charges of travelling se-veral hundred miles to a 
yearly meeting, -where it is evidently known, that not/iiiig was ever done for 
the good of the country, but, on the contrary, continiud contrivances are car- 
ried on for tlie undermining of the govei-nment, doth in church and state" 

The courteous governor railed passionately at the assembly itself; 
gave them the lie direct, and signalized the speaker, and another mem- 
ber, as men " known neither to have good morals, nor good principles :" 
" mean and scandalous, seditious, fraudulent, &c." — The assembly did 
not omit to reply, and to repay his excellency without stint. It was a 
noble spirit of independence, that, undfr the circumstances of the co- 
lony at that period, dictated such language as the following ; which, 
strong as it is, does not convey an adequate idea of the keenness and 
energy of the whole address. 

" We are apt to believe, upon the credit of your excellency's asser- 
tion, that there may be a number of people in this province, who will 
never live quietly under any government, nor suffer their neighbours 
to enjoy any peace, quiet, nor happiness, if they can help it ; such peo- 
ple are pests in all governments; have ever been so in this; and vie 
kno-M of none who can lay a fairer claim to these characters than many of 
your excellency's favourites." "Our juries here are not so learned or 
rich as, perhaps, they are in England ; but we doubt not, full as honest." 
" Notwithstanding those soft, cool, and considerate terms, of malicious, 
scandalous, and frivolous, with which your excellency vouchsafes to 
treat the assembly of this province, they are of opinion, that no judi- 
cious or impartial man will think it reasonable that the inhabitants of 
one province should go into another to have their wills proved." 

"It is the general assembly of the province of New Jersey that com- 
plains, and not the Quakers, with whose persons (considered as Qua- 
kers) or meetings, we have nothing to do, nor are we concerned in what 
your excellency says against them ; they, perhaps, will think themselves 
obliged to vindicate their meetings from the aspersions which your ex- 
cellency so liberally bestows upon them, and evince to the world how 
void of rashness and inconsideratinn your excellency's expressions are, 
and how becoming it in for the governor of a province to enter the lists of con- 
iroversy, with a people who thought themselves entitled to his protection of 
them in the enjoyment of their religious liberties ; those of them who are 
members of this house, have begged leave, in behalf of themselves and 
friends, to tell the governor, they must answer him in the words of 
Nehemiah to Sanballat, contained in the 8th verse of the 6th chapter of 
Nehemiah, viz. ' There are no such things as thou sayest, but thoufeignest 
them out of thine own heart.'' 

"The se bold accusers of your excellency, the members of this assem- 
bly, are a sort of creatures called honesi men, just to the trust reposed in 
them by the countrj', who will not suffer their liberties and properties 
to be torn from them bv any man, how great soever, if they can hinder 
it." 



« (NOTE L. p. 187.) 

1.0R1] George Germain is said to have left the ministry, still persuad- 
ed (after the capture of Cornwallis), of the practicabihty of subduing 
America in another campaign. General Lloyd, the great tactician, had 
suggested a plan of operations, by which this might be easily done ! 
The decept ive assurances quoted in the text, from lord George Ger- 



456 NOTES. 

PART I. main's speech, uere rivalled in the speeches of the other members ot 
.^^ .^^ tlie government. The following' extracts from the debates of the 
House of Lords, of 1778, belong to the same blind system of ministerial 
tactics. 

" The Earl of Suffolk said, that it had been strongly relied upon in 
debate, that America would spurn the offers held out in those bills 
(American conciliatory bills). For his part he was of a very diflerent 
opinion. He had the mosi vmdoubted information, that the Americans 
were in the greatest distress, and would therefore embrace any reason- 
able propositions of peace and civil security." 

" Viscount Weymouth said — with regard to what the Duke (of Graf- 
ton) iiad thrown out respecting a treaty between France and America, 
the most convincing way of reply would be not to argue upon it, but to 
come immediately to tlie point, for which reason he would fully and 
fairly speak to it ; he did therefore in the plainest and most precise 
manner, assure their lordships, that he kne-w not of any such treaty having 
been signed or entered into, betwe&ii the court of France and the deputies of 
Congress, and he hoped their lordships would not fail to remember, that it was 
on the 5th of March (1/ 7t>), likewise, that he stood up in his place, and 
declared he knew nothing of any such thing, nor had an\ authentic in- 
formation of any such treaty being either iri contemplation or exist- 
ence."* 



(NOTE M. p. 191.) 

i'HE charge of nDxuardice against the Americans was discussed, pro 
und con, with considerable earnestness, in both houses of parliament. 
With a view to the amusement of the American reader, and the more 
complete development of my subject, I propose to insert here a collec- 
tion of loose quotations from the debates of that body, respecting this to- 
pic of cowardice, and the employment of Indians and European foreign- 
ers -in the British service. 

Lord Chatham said (1777) — "Ministershavebeenin error; experience 
has proved it; but what is worse, they continue in it. They told you in 
the beginning that 15,000 men would traverse America without scarcely 
the appearance of interruption ; two campaigns have passetl since they 
gave us this assurance ; treble that number has been employed ; and 
one of your armies, which composed two thirds of the force by which 
America was to be subdued, has been total!}' destroj'ed, and is now led 
captive tlirough those provinces you call rebellious. Those men whom 
you call cowards, poltroons, runaways, and kna\ es, are become victori- 
ous over your veteran troops ; arnd in the midst of victory, and flush of 
conquest, have set ministers the example of moderation and of magna- 
nimity worthy imitation. 

" My lords, no time should be lost, which may promise to improve this 
disposition in America ; imless, by an obstinacy founded in madness, we 
wish to stifle those embers of affection, which, after all our savage treat- 
ment, do not seem as yet to be entirely extinguished. While, on one 
side, we must lament the imhappy fate of that spirited office.J-, Mr. Bur- 
goyne, and the gallant troops under his command, who were .sacrificed 
to the wanton temerity and ignorance of ministers, we are as strongly 
impelled, on the other, to admire and applaud the generous, magnani- 

* The Treaty of Alliance was signed a month previous— the 6th of 
February, 1788. 



NOTES. 457 

mous conduct, the noble friendship, brotlierly affection, and humanity PART I. 

of tiie victors, who, condescending to impute the horrid orders of mas- >^^.-^^^-»^_i 

sacre and devastation to their true authors, supposed that, as soldiers 

and Englishmtn, those cruel excesses could not have originated with 

the general, nor were consonant to the brave and humane spirit of a 

British soldier, if not compelled to it as an act of duty. They traced 

the first cause of these diabolical orders to their source, and by that 

wise and generous interpretation, granted their professed destroyers 

terms of capitulation, which they could only be entitled to as the makers 

of fair and honourable war." 

'*^^isg^ace,theDukeof Richmond, turned his attention (1775) to what 
a noble earl (Sandwich), early in the debate, had said respecting the 
cowardice of the Americans. He begged leave to remind his lordship, 
that he did not speak conditionally ; there was no if at the time the 
charge was made, it was a positive one, and could not now be explained 
away by conditions introduced for the first time ; yet, however positive 
the noble lord might have been then, or guarded he migiit be now, he 
could inform his lordship that the New England people were brave; 
that they had proved it ; that the general who had commanded at Bun- 
ker's Hill had confessed it ; that another (General Burgoyne), no less 
celebrated for his taleiUs than zeal for the cause, had confirmed it; that 
an officer, a particular friend of his, on the spot had united in the same 
opinion." 

Col. Bane said — " The Americans have been branded in this house 
with every opprobrious epithet that meanness could invent— termed 
cowardly and inhuman. Let us mark the proof They have obliged 
as brave a general as ever commanded a body of British troops to sur- 
render; such is their cowardice ! And, instead of throwing chains upon 
these troops, they have nobly given them their freedom; such is their 
inhumanity! I only vvisii, from this single circumstance, to draw this fair 
conclusion, that, instead of a set of law less, desperate adventurers, we find 
them, by experience, to be men of the most exalted sentiments; in- 
spired by that genius of liberty which is the noblest emotion of the 
heart, which it is impossible to conquer, impracticable to dismiss." 

Mr. Burke observed — "The Americans had been always represented 
as cowards; this was far from being true ; and he appealed to the con- 
duct of Arnold and Gates towards General Burgoyne, as a striking 
proof of their bravery. Our army was totally at their mercy. We had 
employed the savages to butcher them, their wives, their aged parents, 
and tiieir children ; and yet, generous to the last degree, they gave our 
men leave to depart on their parole, never more to bear arms against 
North America. Bravery and cowardice could never inhabit the same 
bosom ; generosity, valour, and humanity are ever inseparable. Poor 
indeed the Americans were, but in that consists their greatest strength. 
Sixty thousand men h.ad fallen at the feet of their magnanimous, because 
voluntary poverty." 

The Uuke of Richmond said (1775)— "The transportation of 20,000 ' 
Russians would cost government 500,000/. An equal number of 
British troops should be sent at the same period, or ministry might 
find, that the Russians, instead of conquering America for England, 
would take possession of it themselves, in virtue of that law of conquest, 
acknowledged by all freebooters. That the Russians would gladly emi- 
grate to America, no person could doubt, who was in the smallest de- 
gree acquai\ited with the dispositions if those people. Shoals of Cos- 
sacks were continually deserting their country, to seek more comforta- 
ble settlements in the north of China. Seventy thousand of these Cos- 
sacks proceeding on such a plan, had lately bidden adieu to the Rus- 
sian empire. It could not, therefgre, be imagined, that twenty thou- 
.sand Russians would have the least objection to be sent, free of expense; 

VoT., 1,-3 M 



158 NOTES. 

PART I. to America ; but there was much reason to subpect, that, when there, 
y^f-^r-^^^ they might think the advantages rcsuUing from submitting to the Ame- 
rican congress preferrable to those they could derive from defending 
the measures of a Britisli parfiament. 

The Earl of Shelburne, (1775)— With respect to the 20,000 Rus- 
sians, his lordship addressed the ministers in the following terms : 
There are powers in Europe who will not sufier such a body of 
Russians to be transported to America. I speak from information. 
The ministers know what I mean. Some power has already interfered 
to stop the success of the Russian negotiation. As for expecting neu- 
trality from France, that was idle. 

The Earl of Sandwich said (1775)—" If Russian auxiliaries were ne- 
cessary in the former war, as he was convinced they were, they might 
be so now, they might be so on any future occasion." 

The Earl of Chatham said (1777) — "Your ministers have gone to Ger- 
many ; they have sought the alliance and assistance of every pitiful, 
beggarly, insignificant, paltry prince, to cut the throats of their legal, 
brave, and injured brethren in America. They have entered into mer- 
cenary treaties with those human butchers, for the purchase and sale 
of human blood. But, my lords, this is not all ; they have entered into 
other treaties. They have let the savages of America loose upon their 
innocent, unoffending brethren ; loose upon the weak, the aged, and 
defenceless ; on old men, women, and children ; on the very babes 
upon the breast ; to be cut, mangled, sacrificed, broiled, roasted ; naj', 
to be literally eat. These, my lord, are the allies Great Britain now 
has; carnage, desolation, and destruction, wherever her arms are car- 
ried, is her newly adopted mode of making war. Our ministers have 
made alliances at the German shambles ; and vvith the barbarians of 
America, with the merciless torturers of their species; where they will 
next apply, 1 cannot tell Was it by setting loose the savages of Ame- 
rica, to imbrue their hands in the blood of our enemies, that the duties 
of the soldier, the citizen, and the man, came to be united .? Is this ho- 
nourable warfare, my lords .■■ Does it correspond with the language of 
the poet .' — ' The pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war, that 
make ambition virtue.' " 

The Duke of Richmond said (Nov. 18, 1777) — " But, my lords, I wish 
jou to turn your eyes to another part of this business. I mean the 
dreadful inhumanity with which this war is carried on ; shocking, be- 
yond description, to every feeling of a Christian, or of a man. When 
we have heard of the cruellies of other civil wars, we used to rejoice, 
not to have the age, or the country we lived in, the scene of such mi- 
sery ; but, to see England, formerly famous for humanity, coolly 
suffering the worst of barbarities to be exercised on her fellow subjects, 
and appearing tmtouched by the woes she causes, because they are at 
a distance, and she does not experience any of them herself, must be 
truly mortifying to any man who is in the smallest degree possessed of 
national pride. If ever any nation shall deserve to draw down on her 
the Divine vengeance of her sins, it will be this, if she suffers such hoi'- 
rid war to continue. To me, who think we have been originally in the 
wrong, it appears doubly unpardonable : but even supposing we were 
right, it is certainly we who produce the war ; and I do not think any 
consideration of dominion or empire sufficient to warrant the sacrifices 
Ave make to it. The best rights may be bought too dear; nor are all 
means justifiable in attaining them. To arm negro slaves against their 
masters, to arm savages, who we know will put their prisoners to death 
in the most cruel tortures, and literally eat them, is not, in my opinion, 
a fair war against fellow subjects. \\ hen we are unfortunately obliged 
to war with other nations, mutual esteem soon takes place between the 
ti'oops, and reciprocal humanity prevails, which greatly alleviates the 



NOTES. 459 

too many miseries of all wars ; but, in the present contest, every mean PART I. 
artifice has been used, to encourage the soldiery to act with asperity, v^r-v^./ 
or alacrity, as it is now tlie fashion to call it. 

" Instead of taking prudent measures to restrain the military witliin the 
closest bounds of discipline ; instead of making them sensible, that, as 
they were to act against their countrymen, every possible nuans of saving 
their lives, and sparing their property, should be used, and every de- 
gree of compassion shown to men who only erred from mistaken notions, 
and were still to be considered as subjects of the same king, — they have 
been encouraged, by authority, to look upon their opponents as cow- 
ards, traitors, rebels, and every thing that is vile ; and their property 
has been, by law, declared lawful plunder. The natural eflects have 
followed. A military thus let loose, or rather thus set on, have given 
vent to that barbarity which degrades human nature, and a total want 
of discipline and good order is said to prevail." 

The Earl of Sutiolk said (Nov. 18, 1777)— The noble earl, the Earl 
of Chatham, with all that force of oratory for which he is so conspicu- 
ous, has charged administration as if guilty of the most heinous crime, 
in employing Indians in General Burgoyne's army ; for my part, whe- 
ther foreigners or Indians, which the noble lord has described by the 
appeilalion of savages, I shall ever think it justifiable to exert every 
means in our power to repel the attempts of our rebellious subjects. 
The congress endeavoured to bring the Indians over to their side; and 
if we had not employed tliem, they would most certainly have acted 
against us; and 1 do freely confess, I think it was both a wise and ne- 
cessary measure, as I am clearly of opinion, that we are fully justijiedin 
tising every means -which God and nature has put into our hands. I think 
it was a very wise and necessary step, on many accounts; nor can 1 
ever be persuaded, whoever was the adviser, but his conduct will 
stand the full test of public enquiry." 

Lord Lyttleton said, (Dec. .'5, 1777,) " he was much astonished at 
the great parade the nobk: earl had made respecting the tomahawk and 
scalping knife : was an Indian's knife a more dreadful weapon than an 
Englishman's bayonet.' In tiie present war, the chief of the blood that 
had been shed, was shed by the point of the bayonet ; yet, who talked 
of the bayonet as a savage instrument of war.'"' 

The earl of Dunmore declared, (Dec. 5, 1777,) that " the Virgini- 
ans finding themselves disappointed in obtaining the aid of the Indians, 
had dressed up some of their own people like the Indians, ivith a view to 
terrify the forces under him ; and his lordship declare<1, he heartily wish- 
ed more Indians were employed ; that they were by no means a cniel 
people ; that they never exercised the scalping knife, or were guilty of 
a barbarity, but by way of striking terror into their enemies, and by 
that means putting an end to the further effusion of blood." 

Mr. Burke said (1778) — "The savages were now only formidable 
from their cruelty ; and to employ them was merely to be cruel our- 
selves in their persons : and thus, without even the lure of any essen- 
tial service, to become chargeable with all the odious and impotent 
barbarities which they would inevitably commit, whenever they were 
called into action. 

" No proof whatever had been given of the Americans having at- 
tempted an offensive alliance with any one tribe of savage Indians. 
Whereas the imperfect papers already before the house demonstrated, 
that the king's ministers had negotiated and obtained such alliances 
from one end of the continent of America to the other. That the 
Americans had actually made a treaty on the footing of neutrality with 
the famous Five Nations, which the ministers had bribed them to vio- 
late, and to act offensively against the colonies. That no attempt had 
5;)een made in a single instance on the part of the king's ministers, to 



460 NOTES, 

PART I. procure a neutrality ; and, that if the fact had been, (what he denied li 
v^-v-,^ to be, J that the Amcricmis had aciualli; employed those savages yet the dif. 
ference of empiotjing them agaimt armed and (rained soldiers, embodied and 
encamped, and empbying them against the unarmed and defenceless men, 
■women and children, iii'the csuntry, -widely dispersed in their habit ttions, 
■was manifest ; and left those -who attempted so inhuman and unequal a re- 
taliation, ivithout a possibility of excuse." 



(NOTE N. p. 211.) 

Whoever has read the dissertation of Talleyrand, upon the advan- 
tage of forming colonial establishments for the Frencii, after thpir late 
revolution, will be at once aware of the acknowliHlgmcnts whicn Eng- 
land owes to the first emigrants, who prepared this continent fur the 
reception of that portion of her population, whom she coukl not retain 
with safety, or who couhl not exisi with comfort or freedom, at home. 
The eniightenedauthor of the European settlements in America readily 
discerned and recognized the benefit. " In the various changes which 
our religion and government have undergone, which have in their turns 
rendered every sort of party or religion obnoxious to the reigning 
powers, this American asylum, open in the hottest times of our perse- 
cutions, has proved of infinite service, not only to the present peace of 
England, but to the prosperity of its commerce, and the establishment 
of its power." 

Dr. Davenant had taken a similar view of the subject in his Tract on 
the Plantation Trade. 

" Such as found themselves disturbed and uneasy at home, if they 
could have found no other retreat, must have gone to the H ais towns, 
Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, or Holland, (as many did before 
the plantations flourished, to our great detriment,) and they who had 
thus retired to the Eui'opean countries, must have been forever lost 
to England. 

" But Providence, which contrives better for us than we can do for 
ourselves, has offered in the new world, a place of refuge for these, 
peradventure, mistaken and misled people, where, (as shall be shown 
by and by,) their labour and industry is more useful to their mother 
kingdom, than if they had continued among us. 

*' And as to malcontents in the state, perhaps it is for the public safely, 
that there should always be such an outlet or issue for the ill humours, 
which, from time to time are engendered in the body politic." 



(NOTE O. p. 219 ) 

At the iustigalion of Franklin, a society was instituted in Philadel- 
phia, in the year 1743, which took the name of The American Philoso- 
phical Society. It pursued, modestly and privately, for the improvement 
of the members, of whom Franklin and Rittenhpuse were the most 
active and distinguished, enquiries into most branches of physical sci- 
ence. In 1766, another society was formed in the same city, with the 
title of The American Society for promoting and propagating useful 
knowledge. It was composed of unpretending men of all professions, 
anxious to increase the stock of their own information, and to be in- 



NOTES. 



461 



strumental in enlarging UvA of their country. Tiic teat wlnclj they PAUT I. 
established, does th'em'tlie highest hononr, for tlie liberality ami iiiinly v^^-^/-^^ 
of the principles of which it enacteil tht- acknowknlgment. TUty 
confined themselves to the discussion of practical qnesliDns, and the 
investigation of matters of immediate utility. Tlie perusal ot their 
Minutes must inspire every unprejudiced person with a iiigh idea of 
their intelligence and zeal • 1 might say, with admiration, when the 
range of tlieir study and research, is considered in connection witii the 
attention and drudgery, required by tlie active professions, in which 
they were universally engaged Points of social economy and general 
politics were often 'discussed at their sittings, and determined upon 
liie broadest principles of reason and humanity. The following ques- 
tion, for example, was taken up by them on the 3(1 September, 1762, 
" Is It good policy to admit the importation of negroes into America .'" 
Their views of the subject were in conformity with the true theory oi 
national welfare and moral obligation. 

Tiiey could show, in the list of their foreign correspotulenls, who did 
justice to tlieir enlightened character and benevolent aims, British phi- 
lanthropists and statesmen of the first rank. 1 might name Sir George 
Saville, as one of the several distinguished whigs with whom they car- 
ried on a commerce of enquiry and speculation, creditable to the sense, 
patriotism, and catholic spirit of bolii parties. 

The two Philadelphia as.sociations wc-re amalgamated by conrimon 
consent in 1769 -. and, in 1780, incorporated, as the American Philoso- 
phical Society, by an act of the Pennsylvania Legislature. 

1 have admitted by implication in the text, to give greater force to the 
charge of illiberality against the Reviewers, that the Transactions of the 
present institute are not of much intrinsic worth. They deserve, how- 
ever, a higher character; and Jiave never been decried any wliere but 
in Great Britain. The astronomical papers of the first volume drew 
lofty compliments and eager enquiries, from several of the most cele- 
brated savans of Ecrope, Dr. Maskelyne bore, in letters preserved in 
the records of the society, tiie strongest testimony to the genius of 
ltittenhou.se, and to the merit of his Observations on the Transit of 
Venus, wliich were republished in the Transactions of the Uoyal So- 
ciety. 1 liappen to have now under my eyes, a communication to tl.c 
American Society, from Zach, Director of the Oi)servatory of Sa.\e 
Gotha, and an eminent astronomer; in which compliments are paid to 
its labours, indicating- a sense of their value, somewhat difl'ercnt from 
thai of the Edmburg!) Review. A sliorl extract from Dr. Zach's com- 
munication may not be unacceptable here. 

" Last year I received the 3d. vol. of the Transactions of the A. P, 
Soc, which I perused with great satisfaction. The observation of the 
annular eclipse of the sun, April 3, 1791, made at Philadelphia by Dr. 
Rittenhouse, has given me great pleasure, and was of very great use; 
in ascertaining the true diameters of the O and the Moon ; and also 
of the inflexion and irradiation of light : several astronomers of Europe 
have interred l)y it very satisfactory results ; so has the celebrated 
French astronomer, M. de la Lande found, that the observed duration of 
the ring 4' 17" agrees perfectly well, with his diameter O (L . assumed 
in his Astronomical Tables, (iii. edit. 1792.) 

The American Philosophical Society lias always been more studious 
of doing good within itself, than ami)itious of publishing volumes for 
the approbation of the world. A much more favourable idea of its indtis- 
try, learning, and usefulness, is conveyed by the private records of its 
proceeding.s, than by the six quartos of its Transactions, rcpulialile as 
these are, and must be confessed to be, when impartially considered. 
It was early marked by public spirited designs. Witness the appoint- 
ment in 1763, of committees of its mem'oers to make, in diflerent 



462 



NOTES. 



PART I. places, obseivalions on that rare phenomenon, the transit of Venus 
\,^'-^r'y^^ over the Siin's Disk. 'I'lie expense of lliis undertaking it defrayed, 
though possessed, as at present, of no other regular funds than those aris- 
ing from an annual contribution of two dollars from each of its resident 
members. It has given a particular and steady attention to the re- 
sources open to us in the three kingdoms of nature, and to plans of 
improvement in our physical economy. Its functions were suspended 
necessarily during the revolution, as all of its members were more or 
less ai'dent in the cause of independence, and fitted to act a servicea- 
ble part in the struggle. There has not been displayed since, the de- 
gree of vivacity and earnestness in its proper career, v/hich could have 
been wished ; but, as much, perhaps, as was reasonably to be expected 
under all the circumstances of the country, and in the absence of all 
pecuniary patronage. 'I'he hopes to be entertained of it now, are 
considerable, from the numbers, particularly among the rising genera- 
tion, who have imbibed a relish for scientific studies, and from the 
greater importance which it is likely to acquire in the public estima- 
tion, as education and knowledge spread and ripen over the land. Its 
library consists of about four thousand volumes, comprising the best ele- 
mentary treatises in science and the technical arts. Jt h;is exchanged 
Transactions with most of the academies of Europe, and has been en- 
riched with many valuable works, bestowed spontaneously and wiUi ex- 
pressions of lively esteem, by their authors, such as the Bufi'ons, the La- 
voisiers, the Hunters,* whose vision was either less distinguishing, or 
less clouded, (I leave the world to decide which,) than that of the 
British reviewers. Its Museum of Natural History, though not exten- 
sive, contains a number of rare specimens, chiefly in mineralogy. Its 
" meeting hr/use," to use the language t)f the Edinburgh Review, 
where, according to this liberal and courteous journal, its " transactions 
are scraped together,^' is a commodious and handsome edifice, and the 
room in which it assembles, is, certainly, styled " Philosophical Hall." 
The remark of the Review, that this denomination is in the genuine 
dialect of tradesmen, bespeaks as much of effrontery as ill nature ; 
since the Reviewers must have known, that the place of assembling of 
most of the learned societies and professions of CJreat Britain bears the 
same title of Hall ; and that a term exactly correspondent is used re- 
spectively by almost every one of the Academies of Europe : Salle de 
rinstitut, SiC. 

The imagination of these critics might be supposed to be affect- 
ed with regard to "tradesmen." It wilt be recollected, that in their 
first review of Franklin's Works, they complained of his indulging, in 
his Memoirs, in too many details and anecdotes concerning that class of 
persons — " obscure individuals." In Zenophon's Memorabilia, we read 
the following as part of one of the dialogues: " Critias, interrupting 
Socrates, said — 'Anil I, Socrates, I can inform thee of something more 
thou hast to refrain from ; keep henceforth at a proper distance from 
the carpenters, smiths, and shoemakers, and let us have no more of your 
examples from them? ' Must I likewise give up the consequences,' said 
Socrates, ' deducible from these examples, and concern myself no longer 
with justice and piety, and the rules of right and wrong.' Thou must, 
by Jupitei-, replied Charicles.' " &.C. 



* I might add the names of Ingenhauz, Htuy, Humboldt, De la 
Lande, Cuvier, Ebeling, Adelung, Maseres, Biot, Delambre, Campo- 



manes, &c. 



NOTES. 

(NOTE P. p. 225.) 

A jnst account of the character of General Marshall and of his 
work, is given in the Letters of Inchiqnin, (letlcr 8). 'i'lie following 
parls of it 1 could wish lo be read in connexion w illi my text. 

" During the war of the revolution, the jMesent chief justice accom- 
panied the American farces in tlie capacity of deputy judge advocate, 
which situation aflorded him the best n)eans of becoming practically 
conversant witii the details of tliat contest, its difficulties and resources-, 
the character and views of those on whom it mainly devolved; and the 
construction, movements, and engagements of the armies In process of 
time lie attained to situations of more importance, and successively 
filled several of the first oHices. Possessed with tiicse advantages, en- 
dowed with a masculine, versatile, and disciiminating genius, and hold- 
ing a place, calculated to give weight to whatever lie should publish, 
be was selected to compile from the manuscrijits of Washington, and 
from the public records and papers, the joint annals of Washington and 
his country. 

" The objects of the work were to furnish a correct and honourable 
memorial of national events, and to immortalize Washington. His 
biography is therefore prefaced with a full account of the discovery 
and advancement of North America, down to the period when he aj)- 
pears upon the scene. After which ])erlod, till liis death, it is natu- 
rally interwoven with the transactions of the revolution, w-hich his 
achievements so largely contributed to effect, and with the formation of 
the government, at ilie head of which he was placed. 

" The public documents of w hich the chief justice liad the disposi- 
tion, would be inestimable, even if arranged by inferior hands, without 
any attempt at shaping them into a connected narrative. But wrought 
as they have been by him, into a clear, manly, systematic and philosophi- 
cal history, without a grain of merit on the score of composition, the}' 
would outweigh the most beautiful composition that ever was formed. 
There is not another national history extant, which is composed entirely 
of authentic, public materials, by a cotemporary and a participator. 

" Nor is the composition so unworthy of the subject. The commen- 
taries and reflections are simple, natural and just. The style plain, 
nervous, unaffected ; perliaps too bare of ornament, and sometimes 
liable to the imputation of verbosity, but never rougii, irksome, or in- 
elegant. 

" As great expectations were entertained of tliis performance, con- 
siderable disappointment has been expressed at some of its alleged de- 
fects : particularly by those who, vitiated by the malevolent system of 
criticism that prevails in England and this country, are never satisfied 
with nature and plain sense, but incessantly crave the amazing and ro- 
mantic. In every department of letters, standards are erected, to 
which fresh publications are referred for their estimate. But is it fair 
to condemn an American historian to oblivion, because he is less enter- 
taining than Hume or Gibbon, or an epic poet, because he falls short of 
Milton > 

" The American historian had neither anomalies nor miracles to deal 
with. The recent discovery of a new world; the still more recent 
struggles of an infant people to shake off the trammels of colonization ; 
Jate events, of little except moral interest; partial, procrastinated, and 
seldom signalized warfare ; the adjustment of treaties and formation of 
republican institutions ; though highly interesting to modern contem- 
plation, are much less malleable, than remote and doubtful traditions 
©f astonishing transactions, into the magazine of entertainment, which 
seems to be looked for in modern history. But whatever the pi-esent 
age may desire, facts soon become vastly more important than diss&rta- 




464 NOTES. 

PART I. tions ; nor can moral results ever be fairly taken, unless readers may 
^_^,~^^..^^^ iinpliciOy rely on the trutli of the details. 

"Tile narrative of the I^ifc of Washington might perhaps, have been 
enhvened with more biographical and characteristic sketches. But it 
rniisl he remembeied, tliat to draw living characters is an arduous and 
invidious task. And vvlien tlie whole subject matter is well considered, 
the author will he found well entitled to our approbation for the cau- 
tion he lias exercised in tiiis particular. As to Washington himself, the 
uniformity of his life, and taciturnity of his nature, precluded any suf- 
ficient funds for this minor scene : though I cannot refrain from observ- 
ing thai his unaffected and warm piety, his belief in the Christian reli- 
gion, and exemplary discharge of ail its public and private duties, might 
have been enlarged upon with more emphasis and advantage. 

" At such a period as the present, when the press is converted 
into a powerful engine of falsehood, proscription and confusion ; when 
letters are perverted to the most treacherous and unworthy pur- 
poses, it belioves every American, who admires the history of his 
country, it behoves, indeed, every man who loves truth, to uphold 
an authentic national work, like Marshall's, against its malign enemies 
and lukewarm friends, and to cherish it as a performance whose sub- 
ject and autlienticity alone, independent of any other merits, should 
preserve and magnify it for ever." 



(NOTE Q. p. 228.) 

It is curious to iind a journal published in Scotland, complaining of 
the Americans as a " scattered, migratory, and speculating people," and 
attributing to them as such, a system of manners and morality below the 
European standard. M. Brougham lately asked in Parliament a ques- 
tion which we may repeat — in what part of the world is it in which 
Scntchmen are not to be found in numbers? and, we m;iy add, in which 
they do not appear as adventureys and speculators ? We do not, how- 
ever, tax them, on this account, with having " great and peculiar faults," 
but on the contraiy, we respect in them that spirit of enterprise, and 
pride of independence, which ]jrompt them to incur all the hazards and 
hardships of <Hstant emigration, rather than groan in poverty, and 
crouch under hereditary superiors, at home. I think it would be diffi- 
cult to show the process by which the sejise of honour improves, as " the 
spirit of a<henture is deprived of its object, and as population thickens 
and becomes crowded." It is in this state of things that poverty and ser- 
vility are engendered ; that crimes multiply from the impulses of des- 
peration ; that turpitude and brutality are kept in countenance by the 
multitude of examples. The operation of hope upon the mind ; the very 
career itself of seeking and compassing a more cf)mf'ortable, independ- 
ent condition, are favourable to the manners and morals. The sense of 
iionour improves with the sense of personal importance, which grows 
out of self-reliance, and equality of rank. 

The second number of " The Old Bachelor," a work which, in gene- 
ral, is creditable to our literature, contains a keen retort for the pa- 
ragraphs of the Edinburgh Review, to wiiich this note refers. " They 
e.xliibit," says the Virginian essayist, " a palpable and ludicrous struggle 
between the object and the conscience of the critic; between the con- 
flicting purjjoses of lashing Mr. Ashe, for lampooning the Americans, 
and at the same time of infliLting the lash ou them himself" See No. 
2, 1st volume of Old Bachelor, for a full exposition of the absurdity o{, 
'hose paragraphs. 



NOTES. 



(NOTE U. p. 251.) 

Thk whole coiicentnted reproach of this and the succeeding' papje of 
\he text is capable of being fully refuted ; and will be so, I trust, by ihe 
simple annunciation of facts, in my intended exposition of the actual 
state of this country. It may be also retorted, and tliis is the proper 
mode of dealing with it at [)resent. We shall convict the English writer 
of the most hardy disingenuousness, in describing, as peculiar to the 
United States, dispositions and practices which notoriously prevail 
around him. in England, to an unparalleled extent ; which had their 
origin there ; and are almost daily aggravated in amount and malignity. 
The determination on the part oT the Reviewer to calumniate the 
Americans, is immediately betrayed by the preposterous and arbitrary 
refinement of distinguishing between their feeling in getting drunk and 
that of the European. The pleasure of the one is sensual and brutal, 
while that of the other is liberal-minded and soniewliat sentimental ! 
And hence it is, according to the critic , that the Americans decide their 
quarrels in ways which, we are given to understand, are uuknown in 
Europe, — rough and tumbling ; biting and lacerativg, &c. 

I will not refer to the Parliameniary statements respecting the quan- 
tity of whiskey, licensed and unlicensed, consumed in Ireland; and the 
prevalence of intoxication in that uniiappy country. 'I'he vice there is 
not merely "social hilarity betrayed into excess," but the desperation 
of want and abjection, s[MMnging from scllish misgovernment by the 
ruling kingdom. We will confine ourselves to England, and leave it to 
the conmion sense of the reader to determine whether she is entitled 
to boast of her superior sobriety; and wliether there is much that is 
sentimental and generous in the process of intoxication with tlie topers 
mentioned in the extracts which I am about to oH'er. t take tlic follow- 
ing from the late Reports of the Committee of the House of Commons 
on 'he Police of tiie Metropolis. 

"Question put to one of the most respectable witnesses — 
"Do )()u ihink there has been an increased consumption of gin 
within these few years .'' 1 have no doubt of it, as the increase of beg- 
gars is visible : almost all these persons about the streets drink, and 
they train up their children in drinking. I have seen them at the door 
of the gin shops, .giving their children in arms the draining of a glass. 
There are five lai-ge gin shops, or wine-vaults, as they are called, close 
to the Seven Dii Is, which are constantly frequented. There is one where 
they go in at one door and out at another, to prevent the inconvenience 
of their returning the same way, wiiere there are so man} . A friend of 
mine, who lived 0|jposi'e, had the curiosity to count how main went in 
in the course of one Sunday morning, before he went to church, and it 
was :320 " 

Statement of another respectable witness. 

" On a Sunday morning, from At)ril to Michaelmas, on Holljui-n Hill, 
there is nothing but riot and confusion, from Hation (iarden lo the 
MaT'ket, from four o'clock in the morning till eigiit ; the gin-shops open 
so early that they get drunk, and are rioting- and fighting about. 1 should 
think that there must be two, or tliree, or fi)ur hundred — it is quite like 
a market — loose, disorderlv people of both sexes — 1 have sten as nmch 
as three or f<>ur fights on a Sunday morning. Thompson's gin shop is 
what 'hey call the iiest I should not wonder if there were a thousand 
custumers on a Sunday morning, before the time of service — the place is 
full from four in the mornmg till elevt- n " 

These are simple specimens, which do not, by any means, con\ ey an 
adequate idea of the enormity and diffusiveness of the evil. It is to 
Colquhoun's Treatises on the Police of the MctroDoiis,and on Indigence, 
Vol. I.— 3 N 



465 

PART I. 



466 NOTES. 

PART 1. that I would refer on this head. His statements, in those works, are 
,^^^.^o^_/ mude tor 1806 ; and the late Parliamentary reports do not merely con- 
firm them, but show an increase of the vice of tippling in a ratio far 
greater than that of the population. He bears the following testimony. 
" The quantity of beer, porter, gin, and compounds, sold in pubhc 
houses in the metropolis and its environs, has been estimated, after be- 
stowing considerable pains in forming a calculation, at nearly 3,300,000 
pounds sterling a year, a sum equal to double the revenue of some of the 
kingdoms and states of Europe." 

" In the year ending July 1st, 1806, the quantity of porter, strong ale, 
and small beer brewed in London by 20 principal, and 126 lesser brewers, 
amounted to 63,228.432 gallons, valued, at the sale price, at 4,440,384/. 
The annual consumption of this bevtrage must now exceed 12,000,000/., 
and of home-made spirits about 5,000,000/. There are about fifty thou- 
sand licensed ale-houses in England and Wales, furnishing facilities not 
only for intoxication, but every other kind of brutal excess. In the 
whole of the metropolis and its environs, it is calculated that there is 
about one public house to every thirty-seven families. The prevailing 
habit among the labouring people, in every district in England and 
AVales, is to spend the chief part of their leisure time in ale-houses. In 
vulgar life, it is the first ambition of the youth, when approaching to- 
wards an adult state, to learn to smoke tobacco. When this accom- 
plishment is acquired, he finds himself qualified to waste his time in 
the tap-room. But the evil does not rest here. Numerous families of 
labourers lodge with their wives and chihlren in common ale-houses, 
in (he metropolis, and probably in most of the large cities and towns in 
different parts of the kingdom ; while, of late years, the females indis- 
criminately mix with the males, and unblushingiy listen to all the lewd, 
and often' obscene discourse which circulates freely in these haunts of 
vice and idleness." 

The duties upon the liquor brewed by the eleven principal porter 
breweries of Loniton, amounted, in 1818, to 900,000/. sterling. The ex- 
cise upon malt, beer, and British spii-its, throughout Great Britain, to 
nine millions sterling; to which two millions have been added in the 
late addition to the general taxation. 

Mr. Bennet, in asking leave, at the beginning of the last year (1818), 
in the House of Commons, to bring in a bill for the better regulation of 
ale-houses, made the following statement. *' A large proportion of the 
vice and immorality which prevails may be traced to the bad system 
acted upon at present in licensing and regulating public houses. It 
would be seen by the evidence in the report of the committee on the 
subject, not only that houses of the most nefarious kind were permitted 
to exist, but that they existed with the full countenance and concurrence 
of some of the police officers, who frequented them, and who had a 
fellow feeling with the persons assembled in them. There were above 
tivo hundred houses of that description in London, in which a nightly and 
promiscuous assemblage took place, not only of men and women, but of 
boys and girls of eight, nine, ten, and eleven years of age. In some of 
them there was established a sort of regular court of justice, at the 
head of which a Jew presided ; before whom was brought all the pil- 
lage and profits of the day and night, and who superintended their re- 
gular distribution. He knew one instance of a boy, not thirteen years 
old, who, in the course of one night, disposed of property to the amount 
of 100/." 

Lest it should be still supposed that London has a monopoly of the gen- 
trv whom "social hilarity betrays into excess" of potation, or that the 
race may be extinct, I will quote a passage on the subject from a very 
recent work of unquestionable authority — the " Observations of William 
Roscoe, Esq. of Liverpool, on Penal Jurisprudence." " In taking asur 



467 

NOTES. ^"' 

vey of society around «s.'' says this eye witness and =^^f °"f Pf ^"^J ^^^'^ ^• 
- Le of the most striking objects wh.ch attracts «"[ f \^" ' "' ^^^^ '^-v^' 
which particularly excites the observation and surpr.se ot eve.y sua ger 
is the shocking habit ^Aintoxicotion, which is exh.bued not only ui te 
metropolis, but in most other parts of the kingdom, am! ^\>''^\;f ";^;?^. "- 
ally encouraged, is op.niy perm.tt.cl to the most alarmmg andzncehble 
Jtent. Let the reader who doubts this assertion examuie .^'^^ . eports 
of the committee of the House of Commons, appointed to "^q"''^ "^o 
the police of the me.rop<.hs; he will there hnd such ^/^P;;^^^.;""^^^ "^^ 
of the dreadful effects of this vice, as cannot fad to c.U the P ''>1'^ f J^"" 
tion to a subject, in wliich, not only the interests of n.orahty ;*nd le i- 
gion, but the personal and individual safety ot every m.mber of the 
community is in some degree involved. It ,s principally to th'^^ource 
that the committee have traced up the increased depravity of the pre- 
sent times ; and they have shown, by the most authentic *-^^!^^'""; ^ 
most of the horrible crimes which have of late been cumm.tte 1 in ^id 
about the metropolis, have been occasioned by the ' bru ahzmg ettect 
of spirituous liquors; by which the criminal is rendered insenMbe to 
the milder feelings of his nature, and regardless of all consequences 
whether as affecting this world or another. To the same cause a very 
respeciable whnesf attributes the spirit of '"S"^"'-<^^'"^t'""/'i«fn S 
which has manifested itself in some districts, and the murders to which 

'^ As fm-7hrprac.tice of ^am6/m^ which the Quarterly Ucview, with 
monstrous injustice, charges upon " all orders .|f men clergy.^ well as 
laity" in the United Slates, 1 will again refer to Colquhoun s book, toi 
a sketch of the sins of the British metropolis on this score. 1 he details 
are such, both in that work and in the Parhamentary Reports, as I do 
not wish to repeat ; but no one who has read them, and who knows 
America, will deem rhe extravagant, wlien I assert, tli at th^ gambling oi 
London alone far exceeds that of the wliole United States, vvhether as 
the variety and odiousness of its forms; the depravity of spirit with 
which it is pursued; the knavery with which it is accompanied ; the 
crimes and miseries to wliich it leads ; or the amount of th^„\"";f.f ^J^^f 
within the year. Colquhoun estimated this amount at 7.225,UUU^ ster- 
ling, besides 3,135,000/. for fraudulent insurances in the lott^y.-\ M- 
Roscoe, in the work of his which I have just quoted, alledges that 
one of the principal causes of the unexampUd frequency of crinies in 
the present day, in England, is the open and unrestrumed practice oj gam- 
bling, which, originating in the higher classes, has infected the lower, 
till it has become the habitual occupation even of children of the low- 
est ranks, who are seen in the streets of the metropolis, on the Sunday 
particulariy, in gaming parties, fifty or sixty in a gang. + 

Let us now attend to the pretended effects of the anomalous inebria- 
tion of the Americans :— their rough and tumbhng ; their biting and ;a- 
cerating each other, and their gouging. The last named practice is the 
thrusting out of the antagonist's eye in a pugihstic combat. No in- 
stance of it has ever been known in the states north of Maryland ; it 
has occurred in some of the southern ; but is now rare, and beconie dis- 
honourable even among that class of persons, the viilgarest and most 
licentious, to which ii was confined. But, admitting it to be a ground 
of national reproach, is it in itself more savage or disgraceful than the 

* P. 142 3d sec. Police of the Metropolis. 

+ In his Treatise on Indigence, Colquhoun estimates at 10,000, tfie 
class of persons whom he calls lottery vagrants, employed in London in 
procuring insurances during the lottery drawings, 

* Page 30. 



468 



NOTKS. 



PART 1. knobbing. Jibbing, miiling, and all the other modes of injury in fight, fov 
V.^'-V'-^^ \vhii;h the Eiig-lisii liave invented a technical vocabulary ? Is there any 
thing worse in it, than what we read in almost all the accounts of the 
set and mercenary battles, at which the English of all ranks attend in 
thousands with the keenness of passion — to wit : thai such a one, and 
sucli a one, " t!ie clnmpion of England," " the cock of the nation," af- 
ter having demolislied one of his antagonist's eyes, " made continual 
play at the otiier !" Is the spectacle which the gouged combatant may 
be supposed to offer, indicative of more ferocity in the combat, or more 
shocking to the memory, or more oflensive to the sight, than that of 
the vanquished p.irty in the affair described in the following extract 
from Bell's Weekly Messenger, of Dec. 7, 1818. 

" The great battle between Turner and Randall, at Copthorn, on 
Saturday. 

"This match for one hundred guineas a side was fought on Saturday 
at the above spo", amidst thousands of spectators. 

"Turner from tlie seventh round exhibited a head like a red night- 
cap, not a slice of f^esh, (for it was hit in all directions) but what was 
covert-d with b!oo I. There was no knock down till the fourteenth 
round, when Randall, afiei- a hit in every round, to keep the blood in 
motion, floored him by a clean right handed body hit." 

Gouging is abhorred by every man of this country who pretends to 
character: seeking to witness it as aji entertainment is noi imaginable in 
the habits or tastes of any such |)erson. But the head like a red night- 
cap ; the fainting pugilist covered with blood, blinded anti mangled, and 
finally, when incapable of all further offence or resistance, deliberately 
laid senseless, perhaps lifeless, witli " a clean right-handed body hit" — 
This is the exliibition in which men of rank and fashion in England de- 
light; over whichthey preside, and which can draw togetlier|twenty thou- 
sand spectators of all classes, as to a festival not onl) yielding gratifica- 
tion, but furnishing an opportunity for gambling speculations.* Horri- 
ble as these i)rize fights are, they are tliouglit worthy of encourage- 
ment as a substitute for the modes in which the Englisli peasantry and 
popidace wexe and are wont " to decide their quarrels." In the vo- 
lume for 1806, of Nicholson's Philosophical Magazine, there is a disser- 
tation written b) Ur. Bardsley, of VI;,nchpster, " On the Use and Abuse 
of popular Sports and Exercises;" wliich discloses to us what, doubt- 
less, the Quarterly Review must have considered as a secret, that those 
modes are precisely the rough and tumbling, biting atid lacerating v.hich 
it would represent as peculiar to the Americans. Even the gougiitg is 
included, virtually, if not by name, and very frequently manslaughter, a 
term sufficiently familiar in England. We are outdone by the very mo- 
dels of civilization, as will appear by the following statements of the 
Manchester writer. 

" Even in France, and most parts of Germany, the quarrels of the 
people are determined by a brutal appeal to force, directed in any man- 
ner, however perilous, to the annoyance or destruction of the adver- 

* (Boxing.) Dell's Weekly Me-ssenger, May 10th, 1M9. 
"The match between Randall and Martin, took place on Tuesday, 
on Crawley Downs, more than thirty miles from London, and the spec- 
tators were at least twenty thousand in number ; they fought nineteen 
rounds in about fifty minutes, when Martin resigned the contest. Ran- 
dall was matched 150/. to 100/., betting was seven to four upon him. — 
Spring and Carter next entered the ring. A worse fight has not been 
seen for many years. Spring won it in an hour and three quarters. 
There was very Utile money betted on thisjightin London. Many were of 
opinion that the whole was a trick upon the kiio-wing ones" 



NOTES. 469 

sary. Sticks, stones, and every dangerous kind of weapon, are resorted PART I. 
to fur the giatiricatioii of passion or revenge But the most common . 

and s.ivage iiietliou ot setUiiig quarrels U|)on the conliiient is tlie adop- 
tion of the Itonian pancratium. The parties close, and struggle to throw 
each other down; at the same time the teeth and nails are not unem- 
pio}e<t. Ir, shoi't, they tear each otiier like wild beasts, and never de- 
sist from the conflict till their strength is completely exhausted; and 
thus, regardless of any established laws of honour which teach forbear- 
an .e to a prostrate foe, tiieir cruelty is only terminated by their inability 
to inflict more mischief" 

." I'iie mode of figiiting in Holland, among the seamen and others, is 
well known by the appellation of snicker-snee. In this contest sharp 
knives are used ; and the parties frequently maim, and sometimes de- 
stroy each other. The government deems it necessary to tolerate this 
savage practice." 

" 1' is a singular though striking fact, that in those parts of the king- 
dom of Eiigland where the generous and manly system of pugilism is least 
practised, and where, for the most part, all personal disputes are decided 
by the exertion of savage strength and ferocity — a fondness for barbarous 
and bloody sports is found to prevail. In some parts of Lancashire, 
bidl-bdiling and man-slaying are common practices. Ti»e knowledge of 
pugilism as an art is, in these places, neither understood nor practised 
Tliere is no established rule of honour to save the weak from the strong, 
but every man's life is at the mercy of his successful antagonist. The 
object of each combatant in these disgraceful contests, is, to throw each 
other prostrate on the ground, antl then with hands and feet, teeth and 
nails, to inflict, at random, every possible degree of injury and torment. 
Tliisis not an exaggerated statement of the barbarism still prevailing in 
many parts of tins kingdom. Tlie country assizes for L mcashire afford 
too many convincing proofs of the increasing mischiefs arising from these 
and other disgraceful combats." 

" A disgusting instance of this ferocious mode of deciding quarrels, 
was not long since brought forward at the Manchester sessions. It ap- 
peared in evidence, that two persons, upon some triHing dispute, at a 
public house, agreed to lock themselves up in a room with the landlord 
and ' fight it out' according to the Bolton method. This contest lasted 
a long time, and was only terminated by the loss of the greatest part of 
the nose and a part of the ear, belonging to one of the parlies, which 
■were actually bitten off by the otiier, during the figlit. The sufferer 
exhibited at the trial part of the ear so torn ofl ; and upon being asked 
by the counsel what had become of that part of his nose which was 
missing — he replied with perfect naivety — 'that he believed his anta- 
gonist had swallowed it!' It has happened to the writer of these re- 
marks to witness, in more than one instance, the picking up in the 
streets, lacerated portions of ears and fingers, after these detestable 
and savage broils." 

"The judges, on the occasions above mentioned, have frequently de- 
clared in the most solemn and impressive charges to the grand jury, 
that the number of persons indicted for murder, or manslaughter, in 
consequence of the bestial mode of fighting practised in this country^ 
far exceeded that of the whole northern circuit ; and that, in future, 
they were determined to punish with the utmost rigour of the law, 
ofTenders of this description — But, alas ! these just denunciations have 
little availed — at one assize, no less than nine persons were convicted 
of manslaughter, originating from these disgraceful encounters" 

The reader would fain believe, I presume, that these " diabolical 
practices," recited from Bardsley, have ceased ; but I cannot give him 
this consolation, or in any way disguise the truth, as long as the principal 
London Journals present paragraphs like the following .- 



470 NOTES. 

PART I. Courier, Jan. 18tli, 181y. 

V^-v<>^ "MIDDLESEX SESSIONS. 

" D. Donovan was found guilty of biting off the nose of M. Donovan, 
in a fight which they had. J.J. Walceman was sentenced to six months 
imprisuiiment, having been found guilty of seizing U. Cotton by the 
throat, and forcing out his tongue, half of which he bit off, and the 
next day bragged of having eaten." 

Bell's Weekly Messenger, May 31, 1819. 

«« EPSOM RACES, Friday— Third day. May 28, 1819. 

"Several races of minor importance took |)luce this day, and afforded 
considerable amusement and interest to tlie sporting gentry. When the 
races were concluded, they endeavoured to amuse themselves by a view 
of a niffiunly sort of Jight between Oliver, and a black by the name of 
Kenrich, in which the former obtained the victory." 

Sporting Magazine, April, 1819. 

"A pugilistic combat for 100 guineas a side, and 10 guineas, took 
place on Forest Heath, a few miles from Stony Stratford, on Wednes- 
day, April 7th, between George Dunkeley, a giant of 17 stone, and 6 
feet 4 inches in height, and Harry Foreman, a miner from Oxfordshire, 
of nearly equal weight. Many thousand spectators were present. They 
fought nine rounds in the most slaughtering and ferocious manner, and 
in the latter Dunkeley broke his adversary's left jaw, and was declared 
the victor. Dunkeley was so much injured by body hits, that he was 
carried off the ground in a dangerous state." 

Sporting Magazine, May, 1819. 

" PUGILIS.M. 

" Battle between Carter and Spring, on Crawley Downs, 30 miles from 
London, on Tuesday, May 4. 

♦• It is supposed if the carriages had all been placed in one line, they 
would have reached from London to Crawley. The amateurs were of 
the highest distinction ; and several noblemen and foreigners of rank 
were upon the ground. 

" The signal was given for stripping, and a most extensive ring was 
immediately beat out ; and among the crowd numbers of females were 
to be seen, anxious to get a peep at these famous heroes," 8tc. 

Sporting Magazine, May, 1819. 
« COCKING— CHESTER. 

" During the races, a main of cocks was fought between the gentle- 
men of Cheshire, (Gilliver, feeder,) and the gentlemen of Lancashire, 
(Partridge, feeder,) for ten guineas a battle, and two hundred guineas 
the main." 

" The great main of cocks, between the gentlemen of Norwich and 
Cambridge, was fought this month, at the Swan Inn, in Norwich, and 
was won by the former — one battle a-head." 

" On Monday, May 3, and two following days, the match of cocks 
between the gentlemen of Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, took place 
at the cockpit, Holywell, in Oxford, when the former were victors, 
three in the main, and six in the bye battles," &c. 

" Pugilistic contest, near Barnesley, Yorkshire. — This battle was for 
sixty guineas a side, between John Wike, the champion of the latter 
place, and an amateur of the name of Green, a pupil of the scientific 
George Head, on Wednesday, April 14. This contest excited consi- 



NOTES. 471 

derable interest for miles round Barnesley, and the battle took place at PART I. 
the Full-dews, about four miles from Barnesley, in the presence of v,^,-^,,.^^ 
some thousands of spectators. For one hour and fifty-two minutes the 
heat of baUle raged, and during which period 94 rounds were severely 
contested. 

" Wike's head was materially changed, one of his ogles was closed, 
and the other fast verging to darkness. In the 94th and last round, 
Wike was floored from a tremendous hit upon his throat," &c. 

The Sporting Magazine, April, 1819. 
"PUGILISM. 

" Between Purcell and Warkley, for a purse of 50/. given by the 
amateurs of Norwich, on Thursday, April 1. 

" The above contest excited considerable interest among the provin- 
cial fancy, and no less than 10,000 persons assembled on the above spot 
to witness the battle. 

« ROUNDS. 

" 7. Warkley got Purcell's head under the rope, and made some 
heavy hits with his right hand. Purcell's head appeared truly terrific, 
being one mass of blood. 

" 8. Purcell showed a severe cut under the before contused eye 
which appeared closed, and bled profusely." 

" 17. After retreating to his old corner, he fought most dreadfully, 
and no feature of Purcell's face could be distinguished from the flowing 
of blood," &,c 

I have had occasion to remark, in the second Section of this volume, 
that the legislators of New England prohibited the vulgar sports com- 
mon in the mother country. Bull and bear-baiting, horse-racing, and 
cock-fighting, have never been practiced in our northern States; in the 
middle, they have not, with the exception of horse-racing, often oc- 
curred; and it is only in the south that bull and bear baiting is now 
known ; even there it occurs but very seldom. The baiting of horses, 
of which I have quoted an instance, in the text, from the Memoirs of 
Evelyn, appears to have been a favourite sport in the mother country. 
Strutt has recorded it in his amusing volume on "the Diversions and 
Pastimes of the people of England," and given a plate of the manner 
in which it was performed. Asses were treated with the same inhuma- 
nity. With respect to this useful animal, and the more noble one the 
horse, the Americans are altogether free from the reproach of having 
followed the ignominious example of torturing and destroy ing them at 
the stake. Nor do our annals afford an instance of the British refine- 
ment of whipping a blinded bear. This popular practice consisted, to 
use the language of Strutt and Bardsley, "in several persons at the 
same time scourging v;ith whips, a blind-folded bear round the ring", 
whose sufferings and awkward attempts at revenge highly gratified the 
noble as well as ignoble spectators." The diivk-huviing described by 
Strutt, is equally without example in this country, and so I believe to 
be the favourite English amusement of throiving at cocks, of which he 
treats in his third book. But the English traveller, Fearon, has disco- 
vered that the Kentuckians have a pastime called gunderpnUing, that 
is, twisting off at full gallop the head of a gander tied to a tree. Fea- 
ron does not allege that he saw it himself There are, certainly, very 
few Kentuckians who have even heard of it. It is, however, eagerly 
seized upon by the Quarterly Reviewers, who aflTect to shudder, and to 
be scandalized infinitely, as if the feelings of an Englishman at home 
were virginal in respect to acts of brutality towards animals. Dr. Bards- 
lev shall inform vis snecificallv whether this be the fact. The following 



472 NOTES. 

PART 1. passages of his Dissertation might have taught the Reviewers a lilllc 
y^^-y>^>^ caution. 

" If the llomaMS set us the example in devising these sports, (the 
baiting and torturing of" aniniais ) it must be confessed, we h;ive ' bet- 
tered the instructions.' For to E ii^lisli rffinenient and ingenuity, may 
be ascribed the nuble invention of the giffle or spur; bv the aid ot 
wliich, the gallant comba'ants if tiie cockpit mangle, torture, and de- 
stroy each other; no doubt to the great satisfaction and delight of ad- 
miring spectators. Anotiier instance of our oarbaro\is ingenuity must 
not be omitted No other nation but the Britisli lias contrived to ])UL 
in practice tlie battle-royal and the Welch-main. In tlu- foi-mer, the 
spectator may be gratified witli tlie display of numbers of game-uocks 
destroying eacii other at the same moment, without order or distinction. 
In tiie latter, these courageous birds are doomed to destruction in a 
more regular, but not less certain manner. Tliey fight in pairs, (sup- 
pose si.xteen in number,) and the two last survivors are then match- 
ed against each other; so that out of thirty-two birds, thirty-one must 
be necessarily sl'iughtered. 

" Thro7uiiis' at cochs, is another specimen of unmeaning brutality, 
confined solely to our own country. After being familiarized to the 
bari)arous destruction of this courageous birtl in the cockpit, it was 
only advancing one step further in the progress of cruelt) , to fasten this 
most gallant animal to a stake, in order to murder him piece-meal. 

" Bidl-baiting, during the 16th and early part of the 17lh century, 
was not confined within the limits of a bear garden, but was universally 
practised on various occasions, in alt the towns and villages throi-igliout 
the kingd'im. In many places tiie practice was sanctioned by law, anil 
the bull-rings, affixed to large stones driven into the earth, remain to 
tills day, as memorials of this legalized species of barbarity. 

"Numbers of bulls were, and still continue to be, regularly trained 
and carried about from village to village, to enter the lists against drigs 
bred for tlie purpose of the combat. To detail all the barbarities com- 
mitted in these encounters would be a disgusting and tedious task. All 
the bad passions which spring up in ignorant and depraved minds, are 
here set afloat. 

" At a bull baiting in Staffordshire, in 1799; after the animal had been 
baited by single dogs, lie was attacked by numisers, let loose upon him 
at once. Having escaped from his tormentors, lliey again fastened him 
to tlie ring; and with a view either of gratifying their savage revenge, 
or of better securing their victim, they actually cut off" his hoofs, and 
enjoyed the spectacle of his being worried to death on his l)loodj' 
and mangled stumps." 

" The practice of bnll-baiting," says the author of Espriella's Letters, 
*' is not merely iicrmitled, it is even enjoined by the municipal law in 
some places. Atteni[)ts have twice been made in the legislature to 
suppress this Ziflf6rtroi/s custom : they were baffled and ri'liculed ; and 
some of the most distinguished members were absurd enough, and hard- 
hearted enough to assert, tluit if such sports were abolished, there 
would be an end of tiie n.itional courage. The bear and the badger 
are baited witii ilie same barbarity ; aiui, if the ral)l)le can get nothing 
else, they will divert ihemsehes by worrying cats to deaih." 

The boldness of the traveller Fearon, and of the Quarti^rly Review, 
in attempts to degrade the American rliaructcr, bv stories '>f gander 
pulling in Kentucky, and bearb.iitingat New Orleans, must be apparent 
from the quotations I have jusi ma<le ; but I wish to sliow further, to 
what they expose \hf British nation by autliorizing requital In open- 
ing by accident, the English \1'>ntlily Vlagazine, for Sept. 18U3, 1 fell 
upon the article which 1 am about to transcribe. Tiie character of the 



NOTES. 473 

anthor is unknown to me ; but he is not a foreign witness, and cannot pART I. 
he suspected of a wish to disparage his own coiuitry. ^^^^^^^ 

" To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 

''' SIR, 

"It has been remarked by some author, that the English nation is 
more addicted to cruelty than any other enlightened people of Europe, 
and though we must naturally be reluctant in admitting a chaige of 
so disgraceful a nature, yet a little attention to whut is passing around 
us, particularly in respect to our own indifference to the sufferings of 
the brute creation, will, I fear, rather corroborate than refute the asser- 
tion. I shall confine my remarks to two instances of diabolical cruelty. 

"A gentleman of my acquaintance was eye witness to an instance of 
this horrid propensity, near Bu.xtoii ; a fellow exhibited a bear which was 
tied to a stake, with a small length of chain allowed ; the bear was not, 
however, attacked by dogs, as usual, but by monsters in human sliape, 
who diverted tiiemselves by trundling a wheel barrow at it — if this ma- 
chine struck the animal, (lie bear-ward paid 6d. to him who twirled the 
barrow, and if it missed, (which was oftener the case, as the poor bear, 
from woeful experience, had acquired considerable dexterity in avoid- 
ing the blow,) I hen the bear-ward received 6d. 

" The other instance, which fell within my own observation, seems 
to me to combine more associations of a kind disgraceful to human 
nature, than any other I remember ever to have heard of. 

•* As I passed through a lane, a few days before lust Siirove Tuesday, 
I ob.served a considerable crowd in an adjoining field, enjoying some 
game, in which a number of boys were busily engaged ; on a nearer apr 
proach, I saw ten or twelve boys, with their hands tied, pursuing a 
cock, the wings of which had been previously clipped, to retard its 
escape ; on enquiry, I learnt this poor creature was to be the prize of 
him who could carry it off to a certain part of the field, in his teeth; this, 
unfortunately for the object of their pursuit, was no easy task, and the 
scene I witnessed in its prosecution was such, as surely was never 
equalled in the annals of brutality. 

" The cock, as in most such sports, had a little start allowed, when 
on a signal, all its pursuers gave chace ; the first who came up with it, 
endeavoured to stun it with his foot, and if that failed, his next re- 
source was to fall upon it with his body, full length, in which position he 
contrived to Jix his teeth in some part, but the head was usually prefer- 
red, as the animal could not easily retaliate in this situation ! sometimes 
all these bloodhounds were down upon or near the poor cock at the same 
time, one pulling it by the feet, another by the wings, and a third tugg- 
ing at its head, till the weakest part gave way, and the strongest teeth 
bore away the prize in triumph ; whilst the poor creature struggled so 
violently, as at times, by its convulsions, to escape for a moment, the 
monster's jaws ; but if the conqueror proved too strong to prevent this 
momentary escape, his triumph was of very short duration, for by the 
rules of this game, the unsuccessful followers were permitted to trip 
the heels of the hero who was thus bearing away the prize, which they 
generally contrived to do, and before he could arrive at the goal, he 
was usually overthrown by his pursuers, who, falling upon him and 
each other, with the wretched animal in the midst of them, resumed 
this inhuman struggle. 

*' To the disgrace of human nature, most of the less cruel diversions 
which I have mentioned, are conducted by men; but in their refine- 
ments upon all former species of cruelty, boys are selected, and en- 
couraged by the men, and taught to make use of their teeth like canni. 
hals." 

(Signed,) " EGERTON SMITH, 

" of Liverpool." 

Vol. I.— 3 



474 



NOTES. 



PART I. We may suppose Mr. Fearon, but not tlie Quarterly Review, to be ig' 
'^^r-^^^'^^ norant of the speech of Lord Erskine, on the bill which he introduced 
into the House of Lords in 1809, respecting cruelty to animals. The 
Reviewers ought to have r(-collected also, the fate of that bill in the 
House of Commons, where, notvvitlistanding the disclosure of the most 
horrid barbarities, a quorum could not be kept to secure a decent re- 
jection in the forms. The sjieech of Lord Erskine to tiie Peers, fur- 
nishes a kind of evidence whic-h cannot be got over; for iht facts ad- 
duced to demonstrate the necessity of his bill, are vouched upon the 
highest responsibility. The humane mover said, 

" He could bring the must nne.xceptionable testimony to their lord- 
ship's bar, to prove the existences of such practices as were a disgrace 
to humanity, to a civihz<d nation ; one barbyrous practice was, the cut- 
ting and tearing out the tongue of so noble an animal as the horse."* 

I will confine myself to an extract in addition, from this speech, in 
relation to the treatment of that " noble animal, the horse," which 
treatment, generally, I believe to be more savage in England, than in 
any other country on earth. The following staiement of lord Erskine, 
will illustrate also, what kind of 7neat it is such of the poor of England 
as aspire to that luxury, usually obtain. 

" A very general practice prevails of buying i^p horses still alive, but 
not capable of being further abused by any kind of labour. These 
horses, it appeared, were carried in great numbers to slaughter houses, 
but not killed at once for their flesh and skins, but left without suste- 
nance, and literally starved to death, that the market might be gradually 
fed. The poor animals in the mean time, being induced to eat their 
own dung, and frequently knawing one another's manes in the agonies 
of hunger."-]- 

I cannot refrain from noting here a circumstance connected with the 
treatment ot horses in England, which I find stated thus in one of the 
principal newspapers of London. 



* See the number of the English Sporting Magazine, for June, 1819, 
for an atrocious instance of this practice. 

f Some humane person has returned to this subject, in the Sporting 
Magazine, for April, 1819, and given the following account of the same 
hideous aDomination : 

"Let me most earnestly, and with a heart affected by sadness and 
melancholy, and indignant with sensations of shame, call the attention 
of men to the last and dreadful stage of the life of the laborious horse, 
which has spent the whole of his strength, and wasted his spirits and 
his blood in the inost p.iinful, perhaps the most excruciating services. 
He is, in the metropolis more especially, sold in his aged, worn out, and 
unpitied state, to a set of brutal, unfeeling — infernal savages! as any 
that disgrace and shame the bosom of their mother earth — the nackers, 
or horse butchers : men whose fierce and hardened features, and blood 
stained hands and bodies, are an appalling representation of their horrid 
calling. Their places are dens of famine, animal misery, and torture, 
which might make humanity weep tears of blood ! Here are seen 
horses worn out with age and labour, in every possible state of decrepi- 
tude and disease, kept alive as long as possible for the convenience of 
market, lingering under all the horrors of famine, to the degree of de- 
vouring each other's manes, from excessive hunger, and at last sinking 
to the earth, one after the other, from emptiness and weakness ! Some 
of them may have been purchased in the country, and driven longjour- 
nies, with barely food enough, and that of the most sordid and worth- 
less kind, to enable them to stand upon their legs." 



MOTES. 



475 



" December 29th, 1818. This day were shot at the Queen's stables, PART I. 
Jive horses belonging to her late majesty. They had been in the queen's v„^~>r-^^ 
service bet-ween thirty and forty years, and were now despatched (being 
no longer able to do hard ■work) to prevent their falling to the work of 
dust carts, &c. &c." 

Among the ancients (barbarians and pagans !) the beasts that had 
been employed in the buikling of certain temples, were ever afterwards 
released from drudgery, and delicately fed. They were not "des- 
patched to prevent their falling to the work of dust carts." When 
Julius Caesar, in passing the Rubicon, devoted a number of horses to the 
divinity of that river, he set them free to rove in the abundant pastures 
in its neighbourhood. — Was there no field at Frogmore, in which the 
five horses which had served her majesty for thirty or forty years, could 
have been permitted to enjoy the remnant of iheir existence ; if not as 
a debt of humanity to them, at least as a mark of respect to the memory 
of their mistress ? The lines of old Ennius furnish a lesson to her ma- 
jesty's executors. 

Sicutfortis equus, spatioqui saepe supremo 
Vicit Olympia, nunc senio confectu quiescit 



(NOTE S. p. 258.) 

Dr. Mitchell, of New York, has made the following mention of Go 
vernor Colden, in his Anniversary Discourse of 1813, before the New 
York Historical Society 

"Cadwallader Colden had a large share in tiie provincial administra- 
tion of New York. He sent to Sweden, for his correspondent, the dis- 
tinguished professor at Ups;d, a collection of the plants growing in Ul- 
ster county of New York, and accompanied the herbarium with de- 
scriptions. The great author of the sexual system caused the descrip- 
tions to be printed, and in his several publications referred to them as 
authorities. Colden's Catalogue may be seen in the Upsal Transactions 
for 1743. This performance displays great industry and skill, and justly 
places the author among the botanical worthies of North America." 

Linnaeus named a plant of the tetrandous class, Coldeniu, in honour 
of the daughter of Colden. The historian cultivated mathematics with 
distinguished success, and maintained a correspondence on various 
branches of science with several of the most eminent savans of Europe. 
In the year 1743, he suggested and explained in detail, in a letter to Dr. 
Franklin,* the stereoty[)e method of ])rinting. The process which he 
recommended, is the same as that practised, and said to have been in- 
vented, by Mr. Herhan at Paris. 



(NOTE T. p. 266.) 

The first steam boat launched in the Hudson was at once crowded 
with passengei's, and in no part of the United States where the same 
mode of conveyance appeared, did the inhabitants manifest the least 
hesitation about making immediate use of it. Not so in Great Britain, 

* See the letter in the 1st vol. of the New York Medical Register 



476 NOTES. 

PART I. VVe read in an article ow steam boats, in tlie 45tli vol. of Tillock's Phi- 
^^.^ -^_. losophical Magazine, the following statement : 

" At first, owing to the novelty and apparent danger of the convey- 
ance, when the first steam boat appeared in the Clyde in 1812, the 
number of passengers was so very small, that the only steam boat on 
the river could hardly clear her expenses; but the degree of success 
which attended that attempt soon commanded pubUc confidence." 

I take the following additional illustrations of this subject from a mas- 
terly review of Colden's Life of Fulton, published in the Analectic 
Magazine for Sept. 1817. 

" To show how little pretensions the English have to this discovery, 
we lay before our readers the followint; extracts from the best and most 
popular of the monthly publications of that country. 

In the London Monthly Magazine for October, 1813, p. 244, it is 
said, *' We have made it our special business to lay before the public, all 
the particulars we have been able to collect relative to the invention of 
steam passage boats in America, and their introduction into Great Bri- 
tain ; because we consider this invention as worth to mankind more than 
a hundred battles gained, or towns taken, even if the victors were en- 
gaged in a war, which might have some pretence to be called defensive 
and necessary. It affords us great satisfaction to be able to lay before 
our readers a correct description of the Clyde steam boat, obligingly 
communicated to us by Messrs. Woods, ship builders in Port Glasgow. 
It is but justice, however, to those gentlemen, to state, that they candid- 
ly consider the steam boats, as they are at present constructed, (that is, 
on the Clyde) to be in a very rude state, and capable of great improve- 
ment. 

" The boat runs in calm weather four or four and a half miles per 
hour ; but against a considerable breeze, not more than three." 

In the Monthly Magazine for November, 1813, vol. 36, p. 385, an 
account is given of the New York steam boats running on an average, 
with or against the tide, at the rate ♦'of six miles an hour, with the 
smoothness of a Dutch Streckshute." 

In the same page is a wooden cut of the Clyde boat ; and a note of 
the editors, stating, " that the inhabitants of the populous banks of the 
Thames are not at present acquainted with steam boats, only through 
our descriptions of them." 

In the same Magazine for January 1814, p. 529, is a proposal to 
erect a company for the purpose of building steam boats to navigate 
the Thames. 

In the .Magazine for February 1814, p. 29, is a further description of 
the American steam boats, as an interesting article of information. 

In the same .Magazine for April 1814, a further account of Americati 
steam boats is given by Mr. Ralph Dodd, engineer, who had visited 
them in this country. He states that there were then two places iu 
Great Britain where steam boats had been employed, to wit, on the 
river Braydon, between Yarmouth and Norwich, and on the river CI) de, 
between Glasgow and Greenock : and at the close of his account, he 
mentions that he had been urging the use of this mode of conveyance 
for two years past, and was happy to find his recommendations realized. 

By the Monthly Magazine for 1814, p. 358, it appears, that the above 
named Ralph Dodd had succeeded in forming a company to build steam 
boats to be used on the Thames; and in the same page it is stated, that 
the Clyde steam boat had run for eighteen months past : that is, the first 
steam boat began to run in America under Fulton's direction in 1807, 
and the first steam boat began to run in Great Britain in or about the 
month of May, in the year 1813, six years after they had been in full 
operation in this country; in all probability, if it had not been for Ful- 
ton's enterprise and ingenuity, Great Britain would not have had a steam 



NOTES. 



477 



boat for these twenty years to come. He showed them how to succeed. PART I. 
Yet is the account in Uees's Encyclopsedia so drawn tip, as if the whole v,^-v^^, 
of the invention was owing to English skill and enterprise. 

" We hear much (say the editors of the Monthly Magazine for April 
1813, vol. 35, p. 243) of the proven success of the steam passage boats 
against the rapid streams of the great rivers in America : yet nothing of 
the kind has yet been adopted in Great Britain. Are we to succumb to 
America in the mechanic arts ?' This was true ; for the Clyde boat had 
not begun to run when that paragraph was written, nor, we believe, till 
at least a month after it was published. 

" The general index to the first twenty volumes of the Edinburgh 
lieview, comprehending the month of October 1812, has not an article 
relating to steam boats. Yet no one can complain that the editors of 
that work are not sufficiently alive to their national claims." 



(NOTE U. p. 275.) 

In the Discourse of Dr. Mitchell, of New York, to which I have re- 
ferred in Note S., there is the following notice of James Logan. 

" I have a copy of James Logan's ' E.^perimenta, et Meletemata circa- 
generationem plantarum.' They were printed at London in Latin and 
English. He relates experiments made on Indian corn to prove the 
prolific nature of staininal dust. He quotes Dr. Grew, as ascribing to 
Mr. Thomas Millington the original idea, as hing ago as 1676, that plants 
have sexes. It is not a little remarkable, that this small tract is more 
likely to perpetuate the author's fame, than all the judicial acts of his 
life." 

I would observe, on the last phrase of this quotation, that, if the 
learned author of the discourse meant to disparage the judicial acts 
of Logan, he has committed a signal injustice, or spoken without due 
knowledge. Logan's judicial career was one of great integrity, and 
utility to the state. As Pennsylvania was divided into parties for 
and against the Proprietary, and as this early friend of Penn took the 
lead on the side of iiis family, he became obnoxious to keen enmities, 
and imsparing detraction. This accounts for the angry proceedings of 
the House of Assembly towards him from time to time, and for the co- 
lours in which he is painted in the Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 
published in London to counteract the Proprietary interest there . I am 
well informed that Franklin, the author of the Review, acknowledged, at 
a distant period, that Logan had been represented in the work pursuant 
to party leelings and aims, and not in conformity with his real charac- 
ter and services. The cliarges which Logan delivered, as chief justice 
of Pennsylvania, to grand juries, are of singular excellence. He appears 
in them not only as a watchful guardian of the domestic weal, and as a 
sagacious director, but as a profound moralist, and beautiful writer. 
Such subtile disquisition, and lofty speculation, such variety of know- 
ledge, and richness of diction, are seldom found in compositions of any 
kind. Of the practical lessons which he inculcated, 1 am induced to 
quote the following, from a charge dated April 13, 1736, because it has 
a curious appositenessto the present times in this country, and contains 
maxims of universal and perpetual validity. 

" As poverty, and the want of money, has of late been the great cry 
in this place (Philadelphia) ; and riches have been shown to be the na- 
tural effects of sobriety, industry, and frugality ; the true causes of this 
poverty may justly deserve a more near and strict inquiry : upon which. 



478 



NOTES. 



PART 1. the case, it' I mistake not, will appear as follows. It is certainly wiiii ;- 
state, as witli a private family ; if the disbursements or expenses are 
greater than the income, that family will undoubtedly become poorer. 
And, in the same manner, if our importations are greater than our ex- 
ports, the country in general will sink by it. This has been our case 
for some jcars past, owing, in a great measure, not only to the badness 
of the commodity we exported, to the great injury of our credit, (which, 
notwithstanding, is now in some degree retrieved, by the diligence of 
one officer, and the country v\ill undoubtedly reap tiie advantages of it,) 
but also to our using more European and other goods than we can pay 
for by our produce, or perhaps really want; and then the balance must 
be p^ii'l ('f 'tis ever done) in money. 

" These are the open and avowed reasons, th.it may be given, for our 
scarcity of coin : but as to our poverty, it may be inquired, whether 
there be not yet a cause ? And every man who complains, may ask 
himself, whether he has been as industrious and frugal, in the manage- 
ment of his affairs, as his circumstance.s required ? « hcther credit has 
not hurt hun, by venturing into debt, before he knew how to pay .■" and 
whether the attraclions of pleasure and ease have not been stronger 
than those of business .'' but Solomon says, He that loveth pleasure, shall 
be a poor man: and he that loveth wine and oil, (that is, high living,) 
shall not be rich, Hrov. 21, 17- He tells us also, elsewhere, who they 
are tliat shall come to poverty, and what it is that clothes a man with 
rags, Prov. 23. 21. ; and show.s, very clearly, that the ways to get wealth 
were the very same, near three thousand years ago, that they are at 
this day, ami, probably, they may continue the same to the end of the 
world. 

"If people of substance cannot employ men to build, or by other means 
to improve the country, but at higher rates than the work will be worth 
to tiiem when finished, whether 'tis to be let or sold, such workmen 
cannot expect employment, but poverty must come as one that travel- 
leth, and want as an armed man. And if the same love of pleasure, 
wine, and oil, still continue under these circumstances, it will not be 
difficult to find a cause why such are not rich. It is not to be doubted, 
but that young beginners in the world have mistaken their own condi- 
tion ; have valued an appearance, and run too easily into debt; and 
that workmen declining labour on practicable terms, to put it in the 
power of others to employ them, and yet continuing their usual expense; 
It is not to be doubted, I say, but that great numbers, by these mea- 
sures, though they may not be the only cause, have been plunged into 
distressed circumstances, of which they themselves will not see the 
reason : but being uneasy under them, they repine, and grow envious 
against those who, by greater diligence and circumspection, have pre- 
served thentsclves in a more easy and safe condition of life. Such peo- 
ple run into complaints of grievances; cry out against the oppression 
of the poor, though perhaps no country in the world is more free from 
it than ours; they grow factious and turbulent in the state ; are for 
trying new politics, and like persons afflicted with distempers, contracted 
through vicious habits, wjio are calling for lenitives to their pains, but 
will not part with the beloved hut destructive cause; they are for in- 
venting new and extraordinary measures for their relief and ease ; when 
it is certain, that nothing can prove truly effectual to them, but a change 
of their own measures, iij the exercise of those wholesome and ht aling 
virtues 1 have mentioned, viz sobriety, industry, and frugality : not by 
contracting new debts, for this is a constant snare, and a pit, in which 
the unwary are caught ; for tht 6oiro-wer, we are told, is a servant to 
the lender, and the man who gives surety W()rketh his own destruction : 
for why (it is said) should he (thy creditor) take thy bed from under 
thee.' or, which amounts to the same, why should he take that from thee. 



NOTES. 479 

from which thou must gain thy bread, or the place on which thy bed PART I. 
stands ? such rehef is but a snare : and I will here be bold to say, that ■_ ^ ^ -^ _ ■ 
it is not even the greatest quantities of coin that can be imported into 
this province, (unless it were to be distributed for nothing,) nor of any 
other specie, that can relieve the man who has nothing to purchase it 
with ; but it is his industry, with frugality, that must ease him, and enti- 
tle him to a share of it. 



(NOTE V. p. 396.) 

The petition which Lord Nugent presented to the House of Com- 
mons, during its last session (lt;19), on the part of the English Roman 
Catholics, was signed by lO.oOU persons, among whom were eleven 
peers, thirteen baronets, and three huntlred gentlemen of landed pro- 
perty. To make the American reader acquainted with the intent of 
their disfranchisemejit, 1 offer the following extracts from some of their 
late petitions and addresses, as preserved in a valuable work published 
the present vear in London, and entitled, " Historical Memoirs of the 
English Catholics, by Ciiarles Butler, Esq." 

" Several disabling and penal laws still remain in force against English 
Catholics Still are civil and military offices denied them ; still are they 
excluded from many hnes in the profession of the law and medicine ; 
still are some avenues to commercial wealth shut against them ; still is 
entrance into corporations prohibited to them ; still the provisions for 
their schools and places of religious worship are without legal security ; 
still they are ^isahXeA from voting at elections ; still they are deprived of 
eligibility to a seat in the House of Commons ; still Roman Catholic 
peers are excluded from their hereditaiy seats in the House of Lords; 
and still Roman Cathohc soldiers and sailors are legally subject to heavy 
penalties, and even to capital punishment, for refusing to conform to the 
religious rites of the established church. Each of these penal laws has 
a painful operation : their united effects is very serious. It meets the 
Catholics in every path of life ; makes their general body a depressed 
and insulated cast ; and forces every individual of it below the rank in 
society which he would otherwise hold. Seldom, indeed, does it hap- 
pen, that a Roman Catholic closes his life, without having more than 
once experienced, that his pursuits have failed of success, or that, if 
they have succeeded, the success of them has been greatly lessened or 
greatly retarded, or that his children have lost provision or preferment, 
in consequence of his having been a Roman Catholic." 

"How injurious the test acts are, both to the public and to the indi- 
viduals on whom they operate, appeared in 1795 ; in which year, during 
the then great national alarm of invasion, Lord Petre, the grandfather 
of the present lord, having, with the express leave and encouragement 
of government, raised, equipped, and trained, at his own expence, a 
corps of two hundred and fifty men for his majesty's service, requested 
that his son might be appointed to the command of them His son's 
religion was objected, his appointment refused, and another person 
was appointed to the command of the corps. You cannot but feel how 
much such a conduct tended to discourage the Catholics from exertions 
of zeal and lo3'alty .- — but, the noble family had too much real love of 
their country to resign from her service, even under these circum- 
stances. His lordship delivered over the corps, completely equipped, 
and completely trained, into the hands of government, and his son 
served in the ranks." 

"In the last Parliament, (1816) it was shown, that a meritorious pri- 



4^0 NOTES. 

PART I. vate, for refusing, (which he did in a most respectful manner), to at- 
. _^ _ -^_ . tend divine service and sermon according to the rights of the estabhsh- 
lished church, was confined nine days in a dungeon, on bread and wa- 
ter." 

" Tlius the English Catholic soldiers are incessantly exposed to tlie 
cruel alternativt^ of either making a sacrifice of their religion, or incur- 
ring the extreme of legal punisiiment; than which, your petitioners 
humbly conceive, there never has been, and cannot be a more direct 
religious persecution. To an alternative, equally oppressive, the En- 
glish lioman Catholics are exposed on their marriages ; the law re- 
quires, for the legal validity of a marriage in England, that it should be 
celebrated in a parish church ; as Roman Catholics believe marriage to 
be a sacrament, the English Roman Catholics naturally feel great re- 
pugnance to a celebration of their marriages in other churches than 
their own." 

With regard to the Irish Roman Catholics, their situation is worse. 
Their disfranchisement is as entire in substance, and much more galling 
in its operation, than that of the American negroes. In 1812, the num. 
ber of the Irish Catholics was estimated at 4,200,000 ; making five- 
sixths of the whole population of Ireland, and being as 10 to 1, in the 
proportion of the Protestants. Their clergy amounted to upwards of 
two thousand. The following representations are copied from a very 
able and full exposition of their grievances published at the period just 
mentioned.* 

If a Catholic clergyman happens, though inadvertently, to celebrate 
marriage between two Protestants, or between a Protestant and a Ca- 
tholic, (unless already married by a Protestant minister) he is liable by 
law to suffer death. 

The Catholic clergy are unprotected by any law, prohibiting the dis- 
turbance of Divine service, whilst celebrated by them. 

The Catholic clergyman, bound by his vows to a life of celibacy, and 
generally in narrow circumstances, feels the harshness of being held li- 
able to the payment of a modern tax, called bachelor's tax. 

The Catholic clergy are interdicted from receiving any endowment, 
or permanent provision, either for their own support, or for that of their 
houses of worship, &c. 

Whilst the members of all other religious persuasions in Ireland are 
permitted to provide for the permanent maintenance of their respective 
ministers of worship, and of the establishments connected with their 
respective tenets, the Catholics alone are denied this permission. Re- 
proached, as they frequently are, with the poverty of their clergy, the 
misery of their people, and the supposed ignorance of their poor, they 
are forbidden by law, to resort to the necessary measures for supply- 
ing these deficiencies. 

In Ireland, the Protestant parishoners actually enjoy the privilege 
of assembhng together, under the name of Parish Vestries, to the exclu- 
sion of the Catholics, of legislating and of imposing such yearly land tax 
upon the Cathohcs as they may think proper, for the alleged purposes 
of building, repairing, refitting, 8ic Protestant houses of worship — and 
of providing lucrative occupation for each other. 

The people of Ireland, already pay (as a plain calculation will show) 
an average sum, not less than 200/ for every family, that frequents the 
public service of the established church : or in other words, each of 
these families now costs to the people an average sum of 200/. yearly, 
for its religious worship. 

* Statement of the Penal laws, which aggrieve the Catholics of Ire- 
land. 2d. Edit. Dublin, 



NOTES. 481 

" The Irish parliament, in the last year of its existence, solemnly or- PART I. 
^anized a powerful inquisition, the Commission of Charitable Bequests, \^<>^-^^ 
vigiLmt and eager in tlie pursuit of its prey, and armed with every ne- 
cessary authority for discovering and seizing the funds destine;:! by dy- 
ing Catholics for the maintenance of the pious and the poor of their own 
communion, and appropriating them, when seized, to the better mainte- 
nance of the Protestant institutions." 

" Suffice it to say, respecting the general conduct of this board, that 
their zeal and activity in the discharge of their ungracious functions, 
have completely succeeded in frustrating every attempt of the Irish 
Catliolics to provide any permanent maintenance for the ministers of 
their worship, their places of education, or other pious or charitable 
foundations." 

" No Catholic can be a guardian to a Protestant ; and no Catholic 
priest can be a guardian at all. Catholics are only allowed to have arms 
under certain restrictions ; and no Catliolic can be employed as a fowler, 
or have for sale, or otherwise, any arms or warlike stores. No Catho- 
lic can present to an ecclesiastical living, — ^^although dissenters, and 
even Jews, liave been found entitled to this privilege. Tlie pecuniary 
qualification of Catholic jurors is made higher than that of Protest- 
ants." 

" The number of Catholics qualified for seats in the legislature, (if 
learning, talents, landed estates, or commercial wealth be admitted as 
a qualification) probably exceeds thirty thousand persons. These men 
stand personally proscribed by the existing exclusion, whilst their Pro- 
testant neighbours find every facility for ready admission." 

*' Hence, every Protestant feels iiimself, and really is, more firm and 
secure in the favour of the laws, more powerful in society, more free 
in his energies, more elevated in hfe, than his Catholic neighbour of 
equal merit, property, talents, and education. He alone feels and pos- 
sesses the right and the legal capacity to be a legislator, and this con- 
sciousness is actical power." 

"Whatever may be the wealth of the Catholic, his talent, or his ser- 
vices, he is imiformly rehised a jilace upon grand juries within the cor- 
porate towns; and even upon petty juries, unless when the duty is 
arduous, and unconnected with party interests. He more than doubts 
of obtaining the same measure of justice, of favour or respect, from 
the mayor, recorder, alderman, tax-gatherer, public boards, &c. that is 
accorded to his Protestant neighbour. He lives in continual apprehen- 
sion, lest he or his family may become objects of some pecuniary ex- 
tortion, or victims of some malicious accusation, ^ence he is cringing, 
dependant, and almost a suppliant, for common justice." 

"Tims, the Cathohc leads a life resembling that of the C07ide7n7ied 
Jew; of no account personally; but partially tolerated for the sake of 
outward show ; trampled upon individually ; preserved collectively — 
for the uses of others ; permitted to practise commerce and agriculture 
for the benefit of public revenue ; gleaning, by connivance, a little 
money from arduous enterprises and intense labours, which the happier 
lot of the privileged class enables th.em to decline ; but never to be 
received cordially as a citizen of the town, which he enriches, and 
perhaps maintains." 

"It will appear, that the gross number of offices and situations, from 
which the class of penal laws, concerning corporate offices, excludes 
the Catholics, may be considered as amounting — 

"Directly, and by express enactment, to about - 2548 

" Consequentially, to about ..... 1200 

« Total SMS." 

Vol. I.— 3 P 



482 NOTES. 

PART I. " I he judicial situations, controlling the entire administration of 
■ ^^.y.^.^ justice in Ireland, are at present monopolized by the Protestants ; and, 
under the existing laws and system, they must continue to be occupied 
by Protestants alone." 

"There appears to be a total number of nearly 1500 offices connect- 
ed with the professi(m and administration of the laws, which are inter- 
dicted to the Catholics, either by the express letter, or by the necessary 
operation, of the present penal code." 

" One hundred and sixty Fegal offices, of honour and of emolument, 
are inaccessible to Catholic barristers, and open to Protestants. Thir- 
teen hundred other offices are reserved solely for the ruling class, to 
the e.xclusion of Catholic students, solicitors, attorneys, clerks, Sec. &c." 
"Throughout the entire post office, established in Ireland, for in- 
stance, consisting of several hundred persons, there is scarcely a single 
Catholic to be found in a higher situation than that of a common letter- 
carrier ; and few of even this class. The like may be affirmed of the 
stamp-office, bank of Ireland, and the other pubhc boards and establish- 
ments of Ireland." 

"Although not disqualified by an express statute, yet the Catholic 
physicians, surgeons, apothecaries — not inferior in learning, skill, expe- 
rience or character, to those of any other persuasion — are practically 
excluded from medical honours and public situations — and especial- 
ly from medical appointments of emolument or credit, within the in- 
fluence of the crown, or of the numerous departments connected with 
the state." 

" We do not read the name of any Catholic amongst the physicians, 
surgeons, druggists, or apothecaries, attached to the military or naval 
departments." 

"The law presumes every Catholic to be faithless, disloyal, wiprinci- 
pled, and disposed to equivocate upon his oath — until he shall have repelled 
this presumption by his sworn exculpation — in public court." 

" That there exist in Ireland numerous splendid establishments, bear- 
ing the plausible profession of public education, is sufficiently known. 
From the extensive scale and pompous exterior of the buildings, from 
the numerous train of officers and heavy annual charge — a stranger 
might infer the existence of ample and hberal public instruction in Ire- 
land — but, upon a nearer view, he will be quickly undeceived. 

" These seminaries are closed, by law or by usage, against the Catho- 
lics. They are founded, generally speaking, upon strict and exclusive 
Protestantism — upon abhorrence of Popery — and upon the inculcation 
of doctrines, breathing personal imputation and indirect hostility against 
the Catholic populatioh." 

"Protestant families will not, in general, take Catholic servants. 
Every newspaper contains advertisements for servants, signifying that 
they must not be Catholics." 

"In yeoman corps, (armed,) with very few exceptions, no Catholics 
are admitted." 

"In the country corps, the bigotry of the captains generally exclude* 
Catholics; and, even when the captains would wish, for the appearance 
of these corps, to mix a few stout comely Catholics in it, the bigotry of 
the privates interferes to prevent it — as, in most instances, they would 
resign, if such a measure were persisted in." 

"In many towns in Ireland, there are convivial societies, amongst 
whom it it a rule to exclude Catholics." 

"In many counties, Protestants will not visit a Catholic ; and it is the 
fashion to speak of them in the most injurious and degrading terms." 
" The Catholics can feel, and do suffer." 

" The very peasantry acutely feel the stigma cast by government upon 
their sect and their religion. The lowest order even suffer most. The 



NOTES. 



483 



wealthy Catholics acquire a degree of consideration and legal security PATIT I. 
from their property ; but the peasantry are left naked to the pelting of v^-><-^ 
the storm, to all the jibes and jobs of Protestant ascendancy." 

"Not only a Protestant lord looks down upon a Catholic lord, and a 
Protestant gentleman on a Catholic gentleman, but a Protestant peasant 
on a Catholic peasant; and, in proportion as the degrading scale de- 
scends, the expression of contempt becomes more marked and gros's." 



(NOTE W. p. 397.) 

Mr. Fearon relates a story of negro flagellation, which he pretends 
to have witnessed in Kentucky, and from which it might be inferred, 
that the general treatment of the slaves in that state is barbarous. The 
inference would involve a great injustice ; for, their condition is emi- 
nently good in Kentucky, as 1 myself know from personal observation, 
and as every cantlid traveller who has had the same opportunity of judg- 
ing, will acknowledge. They have there, an abundant provision of ex- 
cellent fond ; their labour is light ; and the recreations in which they 
are indulged, give a particular hilarity to their carriage. We have ano- 
ther F.nglish writer of travels. Lieutenant Hall, who has assigned a 
chapter specially to the negro slavery of the United States, and passed 
general sentence, confessing at the same time, that " information as to 
the condition of the negroes, in point of fact, is little attainable by a 
cursory traveller." He, it would seem, only traversed Virginia, North 
Carolina, and a part of South Carolina, rapidly, in the stage coach, and 
by the main road. As he passed along, in the night, lie saw the " fire- 
light shining through some of the negro huts," from which he inferred, 
that they were universally without sufficient slielter from the inclemen- 
cy of the season. Wood, he acknowledges, they might have in plenty ; 
but then " they must have their night's rest perpetually broken by the 
obligation of keeping up their fires." How happy would be the poor 
in England, if they were subjected to the same obligation ! 

This traveller moans, too, over the diet of the negroes in the lower 
parts of South Carolina — rice, Indian meal, and dried fish ! He does not 
deny, that they are amply supplied with the two first articles. Poultry, 
he says, they may raise ; but we know that they do raise it in abun- 
dance, and either consume it themselves, or by the sale of it, procure 
gratifications untasted by the British labourer. If the subsistence upon 
rice be so calamitous a lot, there is enough to engross the compassion of 
an Englishman, in the fate of the vast majority of the population sub- 
ject to the British power in India. It is only on the rice lands, and ge- 
nerally near the coast, that the negroes of Carolina are stinted as to 
animal food : in what is called the upper country, it is given to them 
in sufficient quantity for a daily and plentiful meal. Throughout the 
slave-holding states, there are 'differences in the living of the blacks, 
according to the greater or less productiveness of the soil, the nature 
of the staple product, &c. But no where are they without wholesome 
victuals, adequate to the demands of the appetite, and the support of 
the frame in its full vigour. Lieutenant Hall remained a few weeks at 
Charleston, and there picked up some stale anecdotes about the op- 
preswon of the negroes. He found a Socrates in the black cook of a 
vessel, condemned to death for poisoning the crew ; and has made a 
most ridiculous romance of the affair. Of the kidnapping of free ne- 
groes, he heard something, and is moved, of course, to high indigna- 
tion and rebuke. I do not deny the atrocity of the crime, as odious to 



484 



NOTES. 



PART I. Americans in general as it can be to foreigners ; but it has n>ore thafl 
v,j^-N^^^ ^> one direct parallel in England, to divert tlie anger and denunciat'ons of 
her sons from this unlucky country. Possibly, our traveller may have 
heart! of a practice, which Sir Jamt s Mackintosh has described as " a 
Jlourishing though accursed trade,"* false accusation — the swearing 
away tiie life or liberty of an innocent person, for the sake of the re- 
ward called blood money. I will make the reader fur.ther acquainted 
with it b}' a few extracts from the debates of the House of Commons. 

"Mr. Bennet said, (March 2, 1818,) that he was coiiviiictd he was 
not exaggerating, when he averred, tliat it had been a long established 
practice in this country, (England,) for individuals, day after day, year 
fl/Ver i/ear, to stimulate others to the commission of crime, for the pur- 
pose of putting money in tiieir pockets by their conviction." 

" Mr. Bennet said, (April 13, 1818,) that in many cases, false evi- 
dence was given by police officers, in order to bring the offence within 
the reach of the remuneration. Mr. Shelton, the clerk of the arraigns 
at the Old Bailey, stated, that too frequently these officers endeavoured 
to stretch the point, with the view of sharing in the price of blood. 
The calendars of the criminal courts established the same conclusion. 

" Fi.xed rewards had long been the great blot in our system of cri- 
minal procedure. 

" All the persons who were connected with the police acknowledg- 
ed, that the principle of the present system was bad, and that, from 
the beginning of it to the end, instead of checking or controlling crime, 
it operated as a bounty to base and designing men, who went about, 
not merely to tempt adults to the commission of crime, but (which was 
the most lamentable fact,) to train up children to be criminals. Children 
of nine or ten years of age, instead of being indicted, as they ought to be, 
for picking pockets, were frequently, in hopes of the reward, indicted 
for hig'hxuay robberies. Not rnany months ago, two children, one thir- 
teen, the other nine years of age, were convicted of highway robbery, 
one of the witnesses being a child of six years of age ; although he 
was as sure as he stood there, that were it not for the system of re- 
Wards, their offence would never have iieen ranked so high. 

" The Bank was known to give a reward of 71- on the conviction of 
persons for passing bad money ; and this very circumstance was the 
cause of a great number of the convictions which took place for that 
offence. A great many poor Germans, Swedes, and Irishmen, who 
were ignorant of the English language, were entrapped into the pass- 
ing of bad coin, by persons whose only object was, the getting of the 
rewai-d offered in consequence." 

" Mr. Alderman Wood expressed his conviction, (April 21, 1818,) 
that nine out of ten of the prosecutions for forgery in London, origi- 
nated with persons who were paid for exciting others to commit the 
crime. This he was enabled to state, from official experience and au- 
thentic information." 

The kidnapping of children for the purpose of converting them into 
beggars and Uiieves, or of selling them to those who are engaged in the 
lowest and most disgusting callings of civilized life, is of more frequent 
occurrence in England, than the kidnapping of free negroes in the 
United States. Cases of child stealing, accompanied with circumstances 
of monstrous barbarity, are daily announced in the English gazettes. I 
will illustrate the fact and the process, by some quotations from the Re- 
port of the Committee of the House of Commons, concerning chimney 
sweepers. 

"Children are sometimes so/d by their parents to master chimney 
sweepers, and oftentimes they are stolen. These children are very 

* House of Commons, May 4, 1818 



NOTES. 



485 



liable to cough and inflammation of the chest, from their being out at all p \rt I. 
hours, and in all weathers : these are generally increased by the wretch- y^-v^^ 
edness of their habitations, as they too frequently have to sleep in a 
shed exposed to the changes of the weatlier, thtir only bed a soot bag, 
and another to cover them, independent of their tattei-ed garments. 

" They are very subject to burns, from their being forced up chim- 
neys wiiile on fire, or soon af;er they have been on fire, and whde over- 
heated ; and, however they may cry out, their inhuman m;4Siers pay not 
the leasr avicntion, but compel them, too often vvith horrid imprecations, 
to pro :eed. They are sometimes sent up chimneys on fire. 

"It IS m eviu -nee betort your committee, that at Hadleigh, Barnet, 
Uxbridgt, and \<[\\\<\%o\; female children have been employed. 

" h is ilbo in evidence, that the) are stolen J'rom iheir parents, and in- 
veigled out of workhouses : that, in order to conquer the natural repug- 
nance of the intan.s to- ascend the narrow and dangerous chimneys, to 
Clean which their labour is required, blows are used; Xhwi pins are forced 
imn their feet by the boy that follows them up the chimney, m order to 
coni,jti iiiem to ascend it ; and {.hjit lighted straw h&s Oti en applied for 
that purpose ; that the children are subject to sores and bruises, and 
wounds and burns on their thighs, knees, and elbows ; and that it will 
require itixny months before the extremities of the elbows and knees 
become suificiently hard to resist the excoriations to which they are at 
first subject. 

" But it is not only the early and hard labour, the spare diet, wretch- 
ed lodging, and Harsh treatment, which is the lot of these children, but, 
in general, they are kept almost entirely destitute of education, and 
moral or religious instruction ; they form a sort of class by themselves, 
and from their work being done early in the day, they are turned into 
the streets to pass their time in idleness and depravity : thus they be- 
come an easy prey to those whose occupation it is to delude the igno- 
rant and entrap the unwary ; and if their constitution is strong. enough 
to resist the tliseases and deformities which are the consequences of 
their trade, and that they should grow so much in stature as no longer 
to be useful in it, they are cast upon the world at the age of about six- 
teen, without any means of obtaining a livelihood, with no habits of in- 
dustry, or rather, what too frequeotly happens, with confirmed habits of 
idleness and vice." 

The strong nerves of the Enghsh travellers would not tremble at these 
things. It is the kidnapping of the negro that makes their flesh creep, 
and disturbs their repose. So too, they are in transports of philanthropic 
rage, with the iiegro driving ; an abominable trade and spectacle, no 
doubt, but which has its counterpart in England, to be witnessed at all 
times throughout that land of freedom. " The English," says Mr. 
Southey, (Espriella's Letters, letter 26) " boast of their liberty, but 
there is no liberty in England for the poor. They are no longer sold 
with the soil, it is true ; but they cannot quit the soil if there be any 
probability or suspicion that age or infirmity may disable them. If, in 
such a case, they endeavour to remove to some situation where they 
hope more easily to maintain themselves, where work is more plentiful, 
or provisions cheaper, the overseers are alarmed, the intruder is ap- 
prehended, as if he were a criminal, and sent back to his own parish. 
Whenever a pauper dies, that parish must be at the cost of his funeral .- 
instances therefore, have not been wanting, of wretches in the last stage of 
dise.ise, having been hurried away in an open cart, upon straw, and dying 
upon the road. JVay, even women in the very pains of labour, have been 
driven out, and have perished by the way side, because the birth-place 
of the child would be its parish." 

1 can furnish more recent, though certainly not more authentic testi- 
mony. Mr. Simon, in his " Journal of a Tour in Great Britain," (1815) 



486 NOTES. 

PARTI, speaking of the Poor Laws, proceeds thus: "Among the necessary 
y^^-^y^^^ consequences of this sjstem, is a niultiplicit)' of vexatious laws repect- 
ing settlements, by which the right of removing at pleasure, from one 
part of the country to another, is so abridged, as to attach, in a great 
degree, the labouring class to the glebe, as the Russian peasant is. 
Perhaps, being bound to provide each for their own poor, it becomes a 
matter of importance to prevent new comers from acquiring a settlement 
by removal to a new parish ; and the poor are repulsed from one to the 
other like infected persons Tliey are sent back from one end of the kingdom 
to the other, at, criminals formerly in France, cle brigade en brigade. You 
meet on the high roads, J -will 7iot say often, bat too often, an old man on foot, 
with his little bundle, — a helpless widow, pregnant perhaps, and two 
or three barefooted children following her, become paupers in a place 
where they had yet not acquired a legal right to assistance, and sent 
away on that account, to their original place of settlement, in the mean 
time, by the overseers of the parishes on their way." ( \ •>!. i. p. 224.) 

Mr. Sturges Bourne, in proposing to the House of Commons, (Murch 
25, iyi9) tiis bill to regulate the settlement of the Poor, pointed out 
empiiatically, the notorious practice of "sending back old paupers to 
their original parish, after iliey had spent their youth and labour else- 
whi;re; tearing them from their friends and neighbours." He dwelt 
upon "the extreme hardship upon the paupers, who, having resided 
many years, and formed connexions, were sent home to their parishes, 
and separated from all their friends and consolations to die in a remote 
poor-house."* 

The American negro may, for aught I know, have much more sensi- 
bility than the English pauper; but 1 should, at first view, think the 
fate of the l.itter, thus torn up by the roots, as it were, and transplanted 
to " a hot bed of vice and wretchedness," as the poor-house is styled 
in the Parliamentary Reports, quite as severe and barbarous, and as dis- 
graceful to the country in which it is undergone, as that of the " driven" 
slave- In the history of civifued life, there is nothing more abomina- 
ble than the warfare carried on by the parishes in England against the 
poor, (See the ensuing Note). 



(NOTE X. p. 411.J 

I WISH the American reader to be able to make an immediate compa^ 
rison between the condition, physical and moral, of our negroes, and 
that of the labouring poor of England. 1 will, therefore, place before 
him a number of paragraphs concerning the latter, drawn from the 
Treatise of Colquhoun on Indigence, Espriella's Letters, by Mr. Southey, 
and the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons on the 
Poor Laws of the year 1817. I should premise that the statements of 
Colquhoun and Southey were made in 1806 and 1807, and that a great 
aggravation of all the evilsof which they complain is admitted, on all 
hands, to have taken place within the few years past. 

COLQUHOUN. 

"It has been shown that above one million of individuals (1,234,768) 
in a country containing less than nine millions of inhabitants, have de- 
scended into a state of indigence, requiring either total or partial sup- 
port from the public." 

" A very large proportion of this mass of indigence is to be traced to 
the bad education, and particularly to the vicious and immoral habits of 
the inferior ranks of the people." 

* In 1803, the number of vagrants removed, was 194,052. 



NOTES. 487 

" A prodigious number among the labouring classes cohabit together p \RX I. 
without marriage, and again sej)arate when a difference ensues ; and ^^ 

their miserable oflFspring, from neglect, are rarely reared to maturiiy." ^"^'"^ "*" 

"The morals of the inferior classes of society have been greatly ne- 
glected. Vicious liabits, idleness, improvidence, and sotlishness, pre- 
vail in so great a degree, that until a right bias shall have been given to 
the minds of the vulgar, joined to a greater portion of intelligence in 
respect to the economy of the poor, one million of indigent will be 
added to another, requiring permanent or partial relief, producing 
ultimately such a gangrene in the body politic as to threaten its total 
dissolution." 

"It will be seen also from late publications, that, after making very 
large allowances, at least 1,750,00U of the population of the country, at 
an age to be instructed, grow up to an adult state without any instruc- 
tion at all, in the grossest ignorance,- and without any useful impression 
of religion or morality." 

*' Innocent and ailpable vagrancy are confounded together, and the 
virtuous and vicious mendicant are subject to the same punishment. 
Persons wandering abroad and begging are by law to be whipped or 
imprisoned." 

" In many places, the workhouses on a small scale will be found to 
be abodes of misery, which defy all comparison in human wretched- 
ness." 

" To innocent indigence they are all gaols without ^i^i'/i— punishment 
without crime." 

"A working man may now go where he pleases, with his family, and 
exert his labour where it may be most advantageous to him, as long as 
he can avoid asking parish relief; but if, from sickness, accident, or any 
affliction, depriving him, even for a short period, of the power of sup- 
porting his family, he is compelled to solicit aid from the parish, he is 
from that moment in a situation to be It-gally removed, to that from 
X^hich he came originally ; and when so removed, he must never again 
return to the parish where he was in a situation to gain a subsistence, 
on pain of being treated as a rogue and a vagubo7id." 

"Tlie constant interferences respecting settlements have unquestion- 
ably given a most injurious bias to the minds of the labouring people. 
In the various disputes about who shall afford them an asylum, they have 
been led to conceive that exertion and industry become less necessary, 
since the parish to whicli they belong is, under every circumstance, 
compelled to maintain them." 

"The frequency of these interferences on the part of parish officers, 
and the imdlitudes who have been carted from place to place, with their chil- 
dren, have tended in no small degree to generate vagrancy, since they 
are always unwelcome guests in the receiving parishes. With charac- 
ters thus degraded and rendered doubtful, and often without a single 
relation or acquaintance in the place which has, through the refinements 
upon the law, been deemed their settlement, what are they to do i*^ 
The parish officers have provided no means of employing them ; and 
for their labour, their only means of subsistence, they can find no pur- 
chaser, and yet tlwy dare not return to the parish where they could be useful 
to themselves and their country." 

" In this situation, unable to exist on the scanty pittance afforded by 
the parish, and without the means of filling up the chasm by their own 
industry, their characters assume a new and degraded form, and where 
not immured in a workhouse, they have no resource but to resort to 
the miserable alternative of hazarding a more degrading punishment by 
asking alms, where absolute infirmity does not establish a claim to full 
subsistence.'' 



488 NOTES. 

PART I. SOUTHEY. 

v.^p^v-^»^ "The dwellings of the labouring manufacturers are in narrow streets 
and lanes, blocked up from light and air, and crowded together because 
every inch of land is of such value, that room for light and air cannot be 
afforded them Here in Manchester a great proportion of the poor lodge 
in Cellars, damp and dark, where every kind of filth is suffered to accu- 
mulate, because no exertions of domestic care can ever make such homes 
decent. These places are so many hot-beds of infection; and the poor 
in large towns are rarely or never without an infectious fever among 
them, a plague of their own, which leaves the habitations of the rich, 
like a Goshen of cleanliness and comfort, unvisited." 

" When the poor are incapable of contributing any longer to their 
own support, they are removed to what is called the workhouse. I 
cannot express to you the feeling of hopelessness and dread with which 
all the decent poor look on to this wretched termination of a life of 
labour. To this place all vagrants are sent for punishment; unmarried 
women with child go here to be delivered; and poor orphans and base- 
born children are brought up here till they are of age to be appren- 
ticed off; the other inmates are those unhappy people who are utterly 
helpless, parish idiots and madmen, the blind and the palsied, and the 
old who are fairly worn out. It is not in the nature of things that the 
superintendants of such institutions as these should be gentle-hearted, 
when the superintendance is undertaken merely for the sake of the 
salary." 

" To this society of wretchedness the labouring poor of England look 
as their last resting place on this side of the grave, and rather than en- 
ter abodes so miserable, they endure the severest privations as long as 
it is possible to exist. A feeling of honest pride makes them shrink 
from a place where guilt and poverty are confounded; and it is heart- 
breaking for those who have reared a family of their own to be subject- 
ed, in their old age, to the harsh and unfeeling authority of persons 
younger than themselves, neither better born nor better bred." 

" Perhaps the pain — the positive bodily pain which the poor of Bri- 
tain endure/ro?n cold, may be esteemed the worst evil of their poverty. 
Coal is every where dear except in the neighbourhood j)f the collieries; 
and especially so in London, where the number of the poor is of course 
greatest. You see women raking the ashes in the streets, for the sake 
of the half burnt cinders. What a picture does one of their houses 
present in the depth of winter! the old cowering over a i'ew embers — 
the children shivering in rags, pale and livid — all the activity and joyous- 
ness natural to their time of life chilled within them. I'lie numbers 
who perish from diseases produced by exposure to cold and rain, by 
unwholesome food, and by the want of enough even of that, would 
startle as well as shock you. Of the children of the poor, hardly one- 
third are reared." 

'• To talk of Enghsh happiness is like talking of Spartan freedom ; 
the helots are overlooked. In no country can such riches be acquired 
by commerce, but it is the one who grows rich by the labour of the 
iiundred. The hundred human beings like himself, as wonderfully 
fashioned by Nature, gifted with the like capacities, and equally made 
for immortality, are sacrificed body and soul. Horrible as it must needs 
appear, the assertion is true to the very letter. They are deprived in 
childhood of all instruction and all enjoyment; of the sports in which 
childhood instinctively indulges ; of fresh air by day and of natural sleep 
by night. Their health, physical and moral, is alike destroyed ; they 
die of diseases induced by unremitting task-work, by confinement in 
the impure atmosphere of crowded rooms, by the particles of metallic 



NOTES. 4.89 

or vegetable dust which they are continually inhaling; or they live to pART I. 
grow up witliout decency, without comfort, and without hope; with- 
out morals, without religion, and without shame ; and bring forth s/uiae« 
like themselves to tread in the same path of misery." 

" Let us leave to England the boast of supplying all Europe with her 
wares. The poor must be kept miserably poor, or such a slate of things 
could not continue ; there must be laws to regulate their wages, not by 
the value of their work but by tiie pleasure of their masters ; laws to 
prevent their removal from one place to another within the kingdom, 
and to prohibit their emigration out of it. 

"The gentry of the land are better lodged, better accommodated, 
better educated than their ancestors ; the poor man lives in as poor a 
dwelling as his forefathers, when they were slaves of the soil, works as 
hard, is worse fed, and not better taught. His situation, therefore, is 
relatively worse." 

There is nothing in the foregoing statements which is not fully con- 
firmed in the late Reports of the select committee of the House of Com- 
mons on llie Poor Laws. The report dated July, 1817, makes, with the 
minutes of evidence taken before the committee, a folio of 168 pages. 
It unfolds a state of society extraordinary and deplorable beyond the 
utmost stretch of the imagination, in reference to a country, wearing, 
externally, an aspect of the highest general vigour and prosperity. The 
passages which I am about to extract, can convey no idea of the im- 
pres.sion left by the whole. 

" Your committee cannot but fear, from a reference to the increased 
numbers of the poor, and increased and increasing amount of the sums 
raised for their relief, that this system of poor laws is perpetually in- 
creasing liie amount of misery it was designed to alleviate. 

" The result appears to have been higidy prejudicial to the moral 
habits, and consequent happiness, of a gieat body of the people, who 
have been reduced to the degradation of a dependence upon parochial 
support." 

"In 1803, the sum raised, as poor rates, was 5,848,205/.; in 1815, 
7,068,999/. It is apparent, that both the number of paui^ers, and the 
amount of money levied by assessment, are progressively increasing, 
while the situation of the poor appears not to have been improved. In 
practice, the burden has been imposed almost exclusively on land and 
houses." 

" Of the cultivator of a small farm, it has been said, forcibly and truly, 
that • he rises early, and it is late before he can retire to rest ; he works 
hard and fares hard ; yet with all his labour and his care, he can 
scarcely provide subsistence for his numerous family. He would feed 
them better, but the prodigal must first be fed ; he would purchase 
warmer clothing for his children, but the children of the prostitute 
mnsX first be clothed.' " 

" The independent spirit of mind which induced individuals in the 
labouring classes to exert themselves to the utmost, before they sub- 
mitted to become paupers, is much impaired ; this order of persons are 
every day becoming less and less unwilling to add themselves to the 
list of paupers." 

" In the petition from the parish of Wombridge, in Sulop, the peti- 
tioners state, ' that the annual value of land, mines, and houses in this 
parish is not sufficient to maintain the numerous and increasing poor, 
even if the same were to be set free of rent, and that these oircums'u.-ices 
will inevitably compel the occupiers of lands and mines to relinquish 
them, and the poor will be without relief, or any known mod', of ob- 
taining it, unless some assistance be speedily aflbrded them.' And your 
committee apprehend, from the petitions before them, tiiat this • ; one 
only of many parishes which are fast approaching to a state of derelic- 
tion." 

Vol I.— 3 Q 



490 NOTES. 

PART I. " ^" pi'oporlion to the aggregate number of persons who are reduced 
^^„.^^\ to this unfortunate dependence on parish rehef, must be not only the 
^^^^^*^ increase of misery to each individual, but also the moral deterioration 
of the people." 

"The casualties of sickness and old age do not constitute the greater 
proportion of the demands upon the poor's rate which have raised it to 
its present high amount; a much greater proportion consists of allow- 
ances distributed in most parts of England to the labouring poor, in 
addition to their wages, by reason of the number of their children." 

" Not only the labourers who have hitherto maintained themselves 
are reduced to seek assistance from the rate, but the smaller capitalists 
themselves are gradually reduced, by the burden of the assessments, to 
take refuge in the same resource." 

" A practice has long prevailed in agricultural parishes, of sending 
men, out of work, to work for the inhabitants of tlie parish, according 
to their share of the rate." 

" In 1815, the sums expended in litigation on account of paupers, 
and in their removal, amounted to 287,000/. The appeals against orders 
of removal, entered at the four last quarter sessions, amounted to 4,700. 
Great, however, as the inconvenience confessedly is, of this constant and 
increasing litigation, there are still other effects of the law of settle- 
ment, which it is yet more important to correct; such are the frauds 
so frequently committed by those who are intrusted to prevent even 
the probability of a burden being brought on their parish ; and such are 
the measures, justifiable undoubtedly in point of law, which are adopted 
very generally in many parts of the kingdom, to defeat the obtaining 
a settlement ; the most common of these latter practices is that of hiring 
labourers for a less period than a year ; from whence it naturally and 
necessarily follows, that a labourer may spend the season of his health 
and industry in one parish, and be transferred in the decline of his life 
to a distant part of the kingdom." 

Minutes of Evidence — Extracts from the Examinations of different 
witnesses, overseers of the poor, &.c. 

" What do you consider the capacity for accommodation of the work- 
house in your parish; what number ought to be accommodated? It 
will not accommodate more than 400 well ; there are many of them now 
three and four in a bed, and I believe the boys are six ; the master told 
me so. If the house was spacious enough, I think I could write in a 
hundred families to-morrow." 

"Joseph Fletcher, Esq. The poor-house, you say, is overflowmg ; 
what is the capacity of the accommodation in that poor-house ^ — I think 
the poor-house never was intended to accommodate more than 180, or 
200 the outside, and we have in it, I believe, 260 or 270, if not more. 

" How many sleep in a bed .^ — two or three grown persons ; grown 
persons two in all beds, and some three, and some four. 

"Have you any means of separating the profligate from those well 
ordered and well behaved? — Not sufficient means; it is a difficult mat- 
ter to say which are very bad, and which a litte better. 

"Joseph Sabine, Esq. — You live in Hertfordshire? — Yes. At one 
time your poor were farmed ? Only those in the workhouse ; we now 
pay our workhouse man five shillings per head per week; he maintains 
the paupers and has the benefit of their labour. 

" From your extensive knowledge of the labouring classes, what do 
you suppose has been the cause of the general increase of poor's rates, 
and the decrease of happiness among them ? Losing the feeling of in- 
dependence they had, and their indifference about taking relief." 

" The Rev. Richard Vernon. — You are rector of the parish of Bush? 
Yes. Js your's a purely agricultural parish ? Yes. Would a man with 



NOTES. 491 

twelve shillings a week maintain four in a family ? That must be cal- PART I. 
culated on the price of bread, or potatoes rather, for they are cheap. ^^^^ . 

" What are the weekly earnings of your labourers in general ? 
Twelve shillings they call it. We liave many families who do not be- 
long to us, and we keep them in the parish for fear of what a pauper 
luill swear, for to belong to a parish he likes, he will swear any thing. 

" Wliat is your opinion of the workhouses ? I'hat they act two ways, 
one a little good,-and a very great evil ; the little good is, that they act 
as goals to terrify people from coming to the parish; the evil is, that 
when they are in, however loath they were to get there, they soon be- 
come used to it, and never get out again. 

"You conceive it corrupts tiie morals of the people ? Completely. 
I believe it impossible to mix the lower orders of mankind without do- 
ing mischief 

" Should you not think workhouses, which should be considered as 
hospitals for the aged, and schools for the young, as beneficial to the 
individuals, and economical to the parish ? Certainly not ; as schools for 
the young nothing can be more shocking, except a gaol ; and as for the 
old, they are more comfortable a hundred times in private houses with 
their relations and friends. 

"Do 30U see any disposition in the young persons to help their pa- 
rents, by giving them any of their earnings ? No ; the poor rate pre- 
vents that ; they must go to the parish." 

"John Bennet, Esq. — In what parish do you live.' In Tisbury ; a 
large pari.sh about three miles from Hindon. 

" Have you any persons whose wages will not maintain them and 
their families, to whom you give relief from the poor rates .■' A vast 
number, I think three parts out offuvr of our labouring population. 

"Do you think the morals of tlie lower classes have been much de- 
teriorated of late years? Very much. 

"Is the custom altered in your county of hiring their labourers short 
of the year .' Yes, we never hire by the year now ; we hire to evade the 
settlement of the labourer, {ov six, nine months, &c. 

" 1 am perfectly convinced the price of labour at present, and for the 
last three years (7s. per week) has never been repaid to the farmer, in- 
cluding all other things ; the tarmer has never received a remuneration 
for the labour, generally including poor rates, taxes, and all other 
things." 

" Mr. William Rankin. — You reside at Docking ^ Yes. You say the 
amount of the poor rates during the last year, in your parish, is about 
5000/. } Yes. The rate last year was nearly 18s. in the pound ; this 
year it is 23s." 

" Mr. Thomas Lacoast, of the parish of Chetsey. — Do you not con- 
ceive the labourers, if they were provided for in the house of a farmer, 
and under the superintendance of a master and mistress, would be 
more capable of doing work, and at the same time live cheaper than if 
they provided for themselves ? — I certainly think it would be better for 
the labourers ; I am sure that a man who does not live well cannot do 
the work so well as a man who does. I have a man who is very honest 
and works vefy hard, and I pay him long wages for doing it, and he has 
been at my house not less than nineteen hours out of the twenty-four ; 
and I found he complained that he was not able to do the work, and I 
gave him his dinner afterwards every day, and since that he has been 
able to do the work." 

" Rev. J. W. Cunningham. — You are vicar of Harrow .' Yes. Have 
you any communication to make respecting • Friendly Benefit Societies 
for the Poor.' I have had an opportunity of knowing perhaps sixty or 
seventy Friendly Societies, pretty accurately, and the general state of 
those I have observed is of this kind : They are all held at public houses; 



492 NOTES. 

PART I. their principle viniversuliy is, eitlier to forfeit one-eightii of the whole 
t , savings for the benefit of the pubhc house, to spend in beer, or else 

one-fourth. Among these sixty or seventy, I do not know a single ex- 
ception to tliat case ; they drink for the benefit of the house, a pot or a 
pint of beer each person. Tiiis morning I was examining into the case 
of two in which there were sixty members; a member told me there 
were very rarely twenty who attended; tlierefore, in each of those 
cases they drank sixty pots of beer, and of course got to a state in 
which, if they could, they would drink sixtj' more ; and that principle 
I believe to be almost universal; it certainly is in my own neighbour- 
hood ; in a large number of those societies now, I need hardly say, that 
the demoralizing effects of Beneficial Societies, under their present consti- 
tution, is perfectly enormous." 



(NOTE Y. p. 413 ) 

The state of religion in America has been at all times a theme of 
invective and affected lamentation, in England. As the majority of the 
American population was composed, from the outset, of dissenters, the 
estabhshed church naturally found them horribly delinquent in respect 
to Christianity. We have English sermons of an early date, particu- 
larly one of the celebrated Archbishop Seeker, when Bishop of 0.x- 
ford, delivered in 1740, before the British Society for the Propagation 
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, in which New England is represented 
as being without the knowledge of God, and about to return to "en- 
tire barbarism." His lordship particularly complained that there were 
several districts in America of sixty or seventy miles long, having but 
one minister to oflliciate in them. The case was undoubtedly the same 
in some parts of England and Scotland, when the reproof was uttered, 
and it is so still in the latter country. We read in the history of the 
proceedings of the House of Commons upon the proposition of Mr. 
Vansittart, (May 18, 1818,) to appropriate money to the building of 
new churches, what follows. 

" Mr. C. Grant said, that he hoped the House would see the neces- 
sity of extending the benefits of the grant for the erection of new 
churches to Scotland. To his own knowledge, there were several dis- 
tricts in the northern part of the kingdom, some of sixty miles in length, 
and twenty in breadth, without a church sufficient to contain the one- 
twentieth part of the population." 

The Quarterly Review has acknowledged, within the last three years, 
that the populace of England are "more ignorant of their religious du- 
ties than they are in any other Christian country ;" and that " two- 
thirds of the lower order of English are errant and unconverted Pa- 
gans." Nevertheless, it holds itself entitled to commisserate our un- 
happy lot, in being without an established church. We may fairly, 
therefore, enquire, by what traits this institution is distinguished in 
England, apart from the circumstance of its having left so large a por- 
tion of her population in the darkness of gentilism. 

Before I adduce the extracts which I propose to make from British 
statements, for the illustration of the point, I ought to remind my 
reader, that the English hierarchy has an immense revenue ; but that 
those who discharge the common parochial duties of the church 
are miserably provided. In the year 1810, it was proposed by the 
British ministry to a])propriate 100,000/. as a temporary relief for the 
poorer clergy. Some members of the Opposition suggested that in- 
stejid of laying an additional burden on the people, the higher benefice?; 



NOTES. 



493 



and the livings In the gift of the Crown, should be taxed in favour of PART I. 
those real and almost starving labourers in the vineyard of the Gospel. - , _ -^_ 
This plan was contested and rejected. The Report of tlie Debate in 
Hansard's volume (xvii.) furnishes the following matter, part of the 
speech of the Earl of Hurrowby (the mover of the grant.) 

" About three-fifths of the livings in England are in hiy-patronage, 
and the advowsonsare a part of the estates of 'he proprietors, bought 
and sold like other estates, for a valuable consideration. 

" Livings in private patronage are usually disposed of to the friends, 
relations, or private connections of the patron. 

" The whole number of livings under 150/. a year did not seem to 
exceed 4000. 

" But it had been generally supposed that the poor livings were 
chiefly confined to tlie parishes in which the population was inconsi- 
derable, and the duty light; remote villages, where we wished cer- 
tainly to give the clergyman a better income, because it was not fitting 
that he should receive less than a day labourer, but where his poverty 
was out of sight, and did not aflfect the interests of any considerable por- 
tion of the community. If such a supposition had been entertained, the 
accounts, now open upon the table, would prove its error. Of the 
whole number of livings under 150/. per annum, there were above 600 
which (in 1810) had a population of between 500 and 1000 persons, 
and near 500 livings, with a population of above 1000. Of these 79 
had between 2 and 3000 — 35 between 3 and 4000 — 17 between 4 and 
5000 — 10 between 5 and 6000 — and a considerable number much 
more ; perhaps the strongest instance was in the diocese of Chester. In 
15 parishes, of which six were in Liverpool, four in Manchester, three 
in Whitehaven, two in Oldham, one in Warrington, one in Blackburn, 
and one in Preston, there was a population of above 208,000 persons. 
The revenue of the church in these three parishes, was 1,315/. amount- 
ing to about l^d. per ann. per soul. In Wolverhampton, Coventry, 
Sunderland, and Newcastle, there were cases fully as strong. Taking 
492 as the number of parishes, of which the population exceeded 1000, 
and the income did not exceed 150/. per annum (exclusive of Birming- 
ham and Halifax, in whicii the population of the different parishes was 
not distinguished,) these 492 livings comprehended near 1,200,000 per- 
sons, and the aggregate revenue of the church was only 42,046/. 

"In stating the whole income of the church, in tliese 492 parishes, 
to amount to only 42,000/. their lordships must be aware, that he had 
far overstated the actual incomes of those who performed these labours, 
because half at least of these parishes might be supposed to be held by 
non-resident innimibents, who would of course leave to their Curates 
onli} a part of the profits of their liviuffs. The number of livings, under 
150/. was 3997, and the resident incumbents were 1494." 

♦'Of incumbents, legall}' resident, in 11,164 parishes, there were, ac- 
cording to the bishop's returns in 18U7, oii/i' 4412. If you added to 
these, 152 per.sons, who lived in tlieir own or their relatives houses, 
within the parish, and 176 who lived near, and did duty, the number of 
incumbents legally or virtually resident would amount to 5040. There 
were 340 other persons returned as exempt, on account of cathedral or 
college offices, many of whom might proba!)ly be resident part of the 
year, although they did not fulfil tlie conditions of legal residence, and 
the same observation might apply to many other persons under differ- 
ent classes of non-residents. The number of 5040 was, however, all 
that appeared upon the returns; of these resident incumbents, those 
who possessed incomes under 150/. per annimn, were, 1214; adding 
those of this class who might be considered virtually resident, the num- 
ber would be 1494. It was, however, loo large an allowance to include 
as virtual residents, all those who resided near, and did the duty, for 



494 NOTES. 

PART I. many cases must occur in wliich the paiisli saw noUiing of Ks pastor, 
\^r\''^^^ except when he performed the service of church once a week, or once 
a month, in tlie course of his morning or evening- ride. Of the remain- 
ing 2503 parishes, of which the income was not 150/. a year, and wliere 
the incumbent neitlier actually nor virtually resided, the income of the 
officiating clergyman could only be what the incumbent was able to 
spare out of his own pittance, or rather, generally, it must be the low- 
est price at which it was possible to get the labour performed. The 
power of the bishoji to raise tlie salaries of the curates was rarely ex- 
erted, and its effect might be defeated by private agreement between 
the parlies. 

" This was therefore the state of the church, as it appeared upon the 
returns; on 11,164 parishes there were 3556 legally, or actually resi- 
dent incumbents, with incomes of 150/. per annum, and 1494 with in- 
comes below that sum. The remaining 6124 parishes were left (sub- 
ject to the preceding observations) chiefly to the charge of curates. 
That the non-residence of incumbents existing to so enormous an ex- 
tent, was a serious evil, he would not stop to argue ; the main question 
was, whether it was an evil which the liberality of parliament, without 
a revision of the existing laws, repecting non-residence, and plurali- 
ties, could alone remedy. 

"The present practice, according to which, the non-resident incum- 
bents of livings of 50/, 60/., or 701. a year, put into their own j)ockets a 
portion of tiiis wretciied pittance, and left much less than the luages of a 
^ day labourer for the subsistence of their curates, appeared to him far from 

creditable to the parties concerned, and calculated to degrade the cha- 
racter of the church. Many instances came within his own knowledge, 
in which parishes were served for 20/., or even for 10/. per annum, and 
in which, of course, all they knew of their clergyman was the sound of 
his voice, in the reading desk or pulpit, once a week, or a fortnight, or 
a month. This must also be the case where curates are permitted to 
serve more than two churches. 

" In the present state of the law, or at least, according to the present 
mode of executing it, there was a great diflicidty in obtaining permis- 
sion to erect an additional place of worship, according to the church of 
England, within the limits of an existing parish. The inhabitants, 
therefore, had no choice. They might prefer the church of England, 
but that church shut her doors against them; tliey had, therefore, no 
option, but cither to neglect divine worship entirely, or to attend it in 
a form which they did not so well approve." 

After Lord Harrowby had finished his statements, — of wliich that 
part relating to the non-residence of the reverend usufructuaries of no 
less than six thousand one lumdred and twenty-four livings out of 
eleven thousand one hundred and sixty-four, is so instructive and ex- 
traordinary — the Earl of Stanhope proceeded in this strain : 

" However he might in general diti'er from the noble earl, he had 
always listened to him with a certain degree of satisfaction, because 
that noble earl always appeared as contraclistinguished to many of his 
colleagues, to speak really w hat he meant. 

" In his present speech there was much to approve, and he had only 
to observe, that if from his lips similar observations had fallen, he would 
be charged as the libeller of the ciuirch, as the enemy of our religious 
interests, and the plague knew what. 

" He would venture to predict, that, whether you voted six millions, 
or sixty millions, whether you built churches or' no churches, whether 
you calumniated Dissenters or otherwise, the number of communicants 
of the establishment woulddecrea.se, and that of Dissenters increase, as 
long as they saw the church of England made the engine of state policy ; 
as long as they saw its prelates translated and preferred, not for their 



NOTES. 495 

religious merits, but their slavish support to tlie ministers of the day. pART I. 
For he would ;isk the noble earl fairly to answer, if he knew of no pre- i^^-%^-^_; 
ferments in the higher ranks of the clergy conferred upon such pre- 
tensions ? Wlien he saw the bishops, according to the injunctions of 
their religion, voting against wars, when he saw them voting for the 
liberties of the people, then he would pronounce that the church of 
England had no reason to fear." 

With the established religion, there exists, strange as it may appear, 
a vast deficiency of places of worship, so that a great proportion of the 
British population, greater,! will venture to assert, than the proportion 
of our own so situated, has no access to public Vk'orship. 1 will offer in 
proof, the statements made the last year in tiie House of Commons, on 
the occasion already mentioned, of a grant for tiie erection of new 
churches. 

" The Chancellor of the Exchequer observed, (March 16, 1818) that 
for more thwii a cejitury, the want of accommodation for public worship 
had been felt by the members of tiie established church as a most se- 
rious evil ; and an attempt had been made so long ago by parliament to 
remedy il, so far as respected the metropolis and its immediate vicinity. 
This attempt, however, though attended with considerable expense, 
had been very imperfect in its execution, only eleven chttrchcs having 
been built out of fifty, which it was proposed to erect. Since that time 
no farther steps liad been taken by public authority, though the evil 
had been perpetually increasing with the growing population of the 
country. He liad extracted from parliamentary accounts a hst of twenty- 
seven parishes, in which the deficiency of churches was most enormous. 
The excess of the inhabitants beyond the means of accommodation in 
the churches exceeds 20,000 in each. Of these, sixteen were in or about 
London, and eleven in great provincial towns. In three of them the ex- 
cess in each was above 50,000 souls : — in fotir more from 40 to 50,000 ; 
— in eight from 30 to 40,000 : — and in the remaining twelve, from 20 
to 30,000. In Liverpool, out of 94,376 inhabitants, 21,000 only could be 
accommodated in the churches, leaving a deficiency of 73,376; — in 
Manchester, of 79,459, only 10,950, leaving 68, 509; and in Mary-le-bone, 
of 75,624, no more than 8700, leaving 66,924 without the means of ac- 
commodation. It thus appeared, that in three parishes only, there were 
near 210,000 inhabitants who could not obtain access to their churches. 

"The Chancellor of the Exchequer slated, (March 18, 1818.) that 
the population of London and its vicinity, was 1,129,551 ; of whom the 
churches and episcopal chapels can only contain 151,536, leaving an ex- 
cess of 977,915. 

"In the dioceses of York and Chester, the disproportion of popula- 
tion to the capacity of churches, was little less than in the district of the 
metropolis. In the diocese of York there were ninety. six churches, 
which afford room for 139,163 inhabitants — the whole population 
amounted to 720,091, so that there was a deficiency of accommodation 
for 580,928. In that of Chester, there were one hundred andsi.xty-seven 
parishes, the churches in which would contain 228,696; but the actual 
population was no less than 1,286,702, leaving a deficiency of 1,040,006., 

" In cases such as these, tiie impossibility in which the far greater part 
of the inhabitants were placed, of attending divine service even once 
a day, was, however, by no means tlie only evil. There were many 
other most important functions of his sacred office, which it was impos- 
sible for any clergyman, however zealous and laljorious, adeqviately to 
discharge towards a population of 40 or 50,000 souls, oj' even a mucli 
smaller nmnber. ^ 

With respect to the deficiency in the number o? places for public 
worship. Lord Selsey remai'ked, " the fact was too notorious to require 



496 



NOTES, 



PART I. exj)lanation. Many parts of the kingdom, he lamented to say, were ut- 
s,^^^'-^^-^^^ terly destitute of any means of acquiring moral instruction." 

Tlie chancellor of the excliequer observed, on the same occasion on 
whicii we made the statements quoted from him above, that tiie church 
of Scotland stood equally in need of assistance. Tlie committee of the 
church of Scotland has, in fact, lately represented, that, in thatcountr)-, 
there art forty-seven parislies in need of churches or chapels, and eii^hty- 
eiijht other parishes but ill supplied with religious instruction. 

During the discussion, in the House of Commons, of the question of 
erecting new places of worship, the following, among many representa- 
tions of like import, were made by members of the liighest distinction. 

Lord Milton said, that " there was hardly a parish church in the king- 
dom, in which great encroachments had not been made, by persons of 
wealth, on that part of the church which was the property of the popu- 
lation of liie parish." 

" Wiiere tithes exist," said Mr. Brougham, " the pastor is seen in the 
light of a tax-gatherer. Among the causes of irreligion or lukewarm- 
ness, and ecclesiastical feuds and schisms, he believed none to be so 
prominent as the disputes which arose out of tithes." 

" .4 large proportion," said Sir Charles Monck, " of the present endow- 
ments oi the church are employed in a manner not at all calculated 
to promote the interests of religion." 

The mere fact of non-residence, that is to say, the total personal de- 
reliction of their jjarishes, by so large a proportion of tlie holders of 
benefices, ministers of the Gospel, who had solemidy declared, on enter- 
ing into holy orders, tliat they verily beUeved themselves moved by the 
Holy Ghost, — the mere fact bespeaks a great perversion of character 
and functions among the clergy of the established church. It is in a 
British publication of no inconsiderable note and authority, the Christian 
Observer, for Nov. 1811, that I find the following details, which could 
not have been hazarded, if not in great part indisputably true. 

"Christianity forms little or no part in the regular plan of instruction 
at our universities. Contrary to our experience in every other profes- 
sion, candidates for our ministry are taught every branch of science but 
that in which they are to practise. Chapel is not attended till it is half 
over. Many go there intoxicated, as to a kind of roll call : and though 
the assiimpiion of the Lord's supper is peremptory upon the students, 
no care is taken to teach them its importance." 

" So very lax has become the examination for ordei's, that there is 
no man, who has taken a degree at the univer.sity, who cannot reckon 
on ordination as a certainty, whatever his attainments in learning, mo- 
rals, or religion." 

" A great proportion of our clergy are a set of men, wrapt up in secu- 
lar pursuits, with a total indifference to the spiritual duties of their call- 
ing. Many of them seem to consirier, that they are appointed to a life 
of sloth and inactivity, or merely to feed upon the fat of the land ; and 
that, in return for immense and growing revenues, they have only to 
gabble through a few Ibrmal offices." 

" Many in the higher offices of the church are distinguished for learn- 
ing and piety, but, for all this, we may fear that a great proportion of the 
clergy are the very reverse of these high examples — and betray an inriif- 
ference of conduct, and dissoluteness of manners, which, whilst it is most 
shameful to them, would not be borne with in any other state of life." 

•' A horse race, a fox chase, or a bo.\ing match, is never without its 
reverend attendants; and the man, who, "in the house of God, hurries 
over the offices of devotion, as beneath his attention, will be seen, the 
ne.xt day, the noisy toast-master, or songster, of a club. Their profes- 
sional indolence, but one degree removed from positive misconduct ; 



NOTES. 



497 



their occasional activity, at a county election, in a cathedral county PART I. 
town. You have the honour of finding yourselti in such contests, act- y^^-v^-^^ 
ing in concert with deans, chancellors, archdeacons, prebendaries, and 
minor canons, without number. On such occasions grave, very grave 
persons are to be seen, shouting the chorus of some election ribaldry, 
whose zeal, or even common industry, upon important topics, had never 
been witnessed." 

We are not at a loss for still higher authority on this subject. The 
late Bishop Watson, of LlandafF, wrote thus in his " Memoirs" recently 
given to the world. 

" It has been said (I believe by D'Alembert,) that the highest offices 
in church and state resemble a pyramid whose lop is accessible to only 
two sorts of animals, eagles and reptiles. My pinions were not strong 
enough to pounce upon its top, and I scorned by creeping to ascend its 
summit. Not that a bishoprick was then, or ever, an object of my am- 
bition ; for I considered the acquisition of it as no proof of personal 
merit, inasmuch as bishopricks are as often given to the flattering depend- 
ants, or to the unlearned younger branches of noble families, as to men 
of the greatest erudition ; and I considered the possession of it as a 
frequent occasion of personal demerit ; for I saw the generality of the 
bishops bartering their independence and the dignity of their order for the 
chance of a translation ;'-dnd polluting gospel-humility by the pride of 
prelacy. I used then to say, and I say so still, render the office of 
a bisiiop respectable, by giving some civil distinction to its possessor, in 
order that his example may have more weight with both the laity and 
clergy. Annex to each bishoprick some portion of the royal ecclesiasti- 
cal patronage which is now prostituted by the chancellor and the minister of 
the day to the purpose of parliamentary corruption." 

In a remarkable work, entitled, " The State of the Established Church, 
in a series of Letters to the Right Honourable Spencer Percival," it is 
said, that the London clergy afford a faint, though laudable exception 
to the above general description. I am not disposed to question the 
fact, but I lay before tlie American reader, that he may judge for him- 
self, the foUowmg extract from the proceedings of the British House of 
Commons, on the 24th March, 1819. ' 

" Sir James Graham called the attention of the house to the situation 
of the clergy of fifty of the parishes in the city of London. In tldrty 
out of the^i'^ parishes, the petitioners performed tlie duty in person." 

" Mr. Haivey said, he was of opinion that the petitioners were endea- 
vouring, by slow, but sure degrees, to accomplish designs which they 
dared not unfold at once, as they knew the rapacity which was their cha- 
racienstic, would not fail to cause the house to repel them with indigna- 
tion if those designs were fully known. The Hon. Baronet had en- 
deavoured to awaken the sympathy of the house for these gentlemen, 
but he (Mr. Harvey) stated almost all of them to have 400/. per an- 
num, and some had 600/. or more. Above twenty were pluralisls, and 
if they had no residences in the city, it was because they were the best 
calculators in it, and preferred letting their houses fur the sake of 
the profit that might be thus obtained. Xot one of them dared to call 
on tlie house to take his individual case into consideration. The value 
they themselves attached to their own labours, might be collected 
from the sums they paid to the curates who officiated for them, and who 
received 50/, 60/, or 701. per annum from those who were in the yearly 
receipt of 1000/., 1500/., or 2000/." 

Now what are the character and situation of the episcopal clergy 
throughout this country, where the church is divorced from the slate ? 
Asa body they are unimpeachable in all respects; of the be.st morals 
and most regular habits; indefatigable in discharging the most solemn 
of trusts; ever at the post of dutv. One small part of them is nor 

Vol. I.— 3 R 



498 



NOTES. 



PART I. endowed with princely revenues, while the majority drag on a life or 
V^-V^^/ indigence and abjection. The provision for each member is not ample, 
but for the most part enough to assure a decent, comfortable, and inde- 
pendent existence. The same remarks may be extended to our regular 
clergy of every description, among whom non-residence and pluralities 
are unknown, and whose stipend arises directly as it were, from the 
esteem and confidence of their parisiiioners. 

The detections lately made in England, respecting the abuse of the 
public charities, with which the established clergy are so largely con- 
nected, furnish additional proof of the state of things implied by the 
circumstance of " three -fifths of the livings being in lay patronage, 
and being usually disposed of to the private connexions of the patron." 
The Bill for enquiring into the malversation of the charities, which 
Mr. Brougham, as the chairman of the education committee, introduced 
into the House of Commons, was vehemently opposed in the upper 
house by the prelates, and destroyed through their influence. Tliere 
are, it would seem, five hundred free schools in England and Wales, all 
of which are grossly perverted from their purpose. " It is absolutely 
necessary," said Lord Eldon, speaking as chancellor, (C. 13. V. 580,) 
" that it sJiould be perfectly known that charity estates all over the king- 
dom are dealt with in a manner most grossly improvident, amounting 
to the most direct breach of trust." The Report of the committee of 
Parliament on the education of the lower orders, (May 1818,) is still 
stronger on this head. " It appears clearly from the I'cturns," says the 
committee, "as well as from other sources, that a very great deficiency 
exists in the means of educating the poor, wherever tlie population is 
thin and scattered over the county districts. The efforts of individuals 
combined in societies are almost wliolly confined to populous places." 

" In the course of tiieir enquiries your committee have incidentally 
observed that charitable funds, connected with education, are not alone 
liable to great abuses. Equal negligence and malversation appear to have 
prevailed in all other charities." 

Mr. Brougham, the chairm.'ui of the committee, said (June 3d, 1818,) 
" that It had been generally grauted, indeed nothing was more manifest 
to the committee of that house, 'that abuses prevailed, not alone in the 
charities connected with education, but in all other public charities, of 
what description soever. He would pledge himself to prove that cf all 
the charities in which abuses exist, none were greater or grosser than 
in those where special visitors (to charitable institutions) wereappoinl- 
ed. A variety of causes concurred to produce this evd. In some in- 
stances these visitors resided at a distance, and never exercised theii- 
powers ; in others the visitor was the patron of the school, and did not 
correct abuses to which his system led ; in others the visitor was the 
heir at law of the endower, and had rather pocket the funds than ap- 
ply them to the proper purposes ; and of course he did not visit his own 
sins very heavily on his own head. Indeed he could say positively that 
the grossest case of abuse that came before the committee, was of a 
charity where special visitors have been appohited, but who had never 
attended to their duties for twenty years." 

As a specimen of these abuses, I take the following instance related 
in Mr. Brougham's admirable pamphlet — The "Letter to Sir Samuel 
Romilly, respecting the Charities." 

" The Dean and Chapter of Lincoln have the patronage as well as the 
superintendence of Spital charity ; yet they allow the warden, son of 
their Diocesan, to enjoy the produce of large estates, devised to him in 
trust for the poor of two parishes, as well as oi the hospital, while he only 
pays a few pounds to four or five of the latter. The Bishop himself iV 
patron and visitor of Mere, and permits the warden, his nephew (for 
whom he made the vacancy by promoting his predecessor,) to enjoy anc! 



NOTES. 

underlet a considerable trust estate, paving only 24/. a year to the PART I. 
poor." (P. 25.) \^->r^Sm,i 

" The statutes of Winchester College require, in the most express 
terms, that only " the poor and indigent" sliall be admitted upon the foun- 
dation. They are, in fact, all children of persons in easy circumstances; 
many of opulent parents. Boys, wiien they attain the age of fifteen, 
solemnly swear that they have not 31. 6s. a year to spend; yet as a 
practical commentary on this oath, they pay ten guineas a year to the 
masters, and the average of their e.vpenses exceed 50/. It is ordered 
that if any boy comes into the possession of property to the amount of 
51. a year, he shall be expelled ; and this is construed 66/. 13s. 4</. re- 
gard being had to the diminisiied value of money, although the vvar- 
<iens, fellows and scholars all swear to observe the statutes " according 
to tiieir plain, literal, and grammatical sense and understanding. The 
infractions of the original .statutes are sought to be justified by the con- 
nivance of successive visitors, and it is alledged that they have even 
authorized them by positive orders (injunctions). But the statutes ap- 
pointing the visitor, expressly prohibit him from altering them in any 
manner or way directly or indirectly, and declare all acts in contraven- 
tion of them absolutely null. I must add, tliat notwithstanding the dis- 
regard shown to some statutes and some oaths, there was a strong dis- 
position manifested in the members of the college to respect tliose 
which they imagined bound them to kecj) their foundation and their 
concerns secret."* 

In his speech of May 1818, on this subject, Mr. Brougham stated, 
" that the whole income actually received by charities of all descriptions, 
might be between 7 or 800,000/. ; but the sum which ought to be re- 
ceived by charities was nearer two milhons sterling than fifteen hun- 
dred thousand ;" and his account of the formation of this immense fund, 
so infamously plundered and dilapidated, is not a little remarkable. 

" It is impossible," said the orator, " for me to close these remarks 
without e.xpressing the extraordinary gratification which I feel, in ob- 
serving how amply the poor of this country have in all ages been en- 
dowed by the pious munificence of individuals. It is with unspeakable 
deWght that I contemplate the rich gifts that have been bestowed — the 
honest zeal displayed by private persons for the benefit of their fellow 
creatures. When we inquire from whence proceeded those magnifi- 
cent endowments, we generally find that it is not from the public po- 
licy, nor the bounty of those who in their day possessing princely re- 
venues, were anxious to devote a portion of them for the benefit of 
mankind — not from those, who having amassed vast fortunes by public 
employment, were desirous to repay in charity a little of what they 
had thus levied upon the state. It is far more frequently some obscure 
personage — some tradesman of humble birth, who, grateful for the edu- 
cation which had enabled him to acquire his wealth through honest in- 
dustry, turned a portion of it from the claims of nearer connexions to 
enable other helpless creatures in circumstances like his own, to meet 
the struggles he himself had undergone." 

The guardianship of what the honest tradesman had thus nobly ap- 
propriated, fell in a great measure to the established church as such, and 
the consequence is the waste of nearly two-thirds by embezzlement 
and neglect ! It is incredible what opposition was made both in and out 
of parliament to the idea of a parliamentary commission for enquiring 
into charities having special " visitors, governors and overseers !" 
" Almost every considerable charity," says Mr Brougham, "is subject 
to special visitation. We (the education committee) were severely re- 
proved for pushing our inquiries into establishments destined it was 
said for the education of the unper classes, while our instructions 

* P. 51, 2. 



500 NOTE is 

PART I. confined U3 to schools for the lower orders. Unforlunalely, we no 
i . sooner looked into any of these institutions, than we found tliat this ob- 

jection to our jurisdiction rested upon theveiy abuses, which we were 
investi/^ating, and not upon the real nature of the foundation. For as 
often as we examined any establishment, the production of the charter 
or statutes proved that it was originally destined for the education of 
the poor.* The alarms conceived by the members and friends of the 
church at the prospect of a thorougli investigation, and their strenuous, 
and in part successful, eflbrts to avert that calamity, are strikingly 
contrasted, as they are related by Mr. Brougham in his pamphlet, with 
the fact announced in the following statement. 

"The Chancellor of the Exchequer said (House of Commons, June 
3d, 1818,) that the bill (on the subject of the charitable institution en- 
quiry) exempted the schools of Quakers, and yet he was authoi-ized to 
say from that respectable body of men, that they had not only no ol)jec- 
tion to ihe e.xamination of their few charitable schools, but that they 
should rejoice at finding them made the subject of Parliamentary in- 
quiry." 

The advantage of an established church, as regards the cause of Chris- 
tians, if not imaginary, would be shewn, at least in the greater morality 
and decorum of the lives of its professors and constitutional supporters. 
If it failed to make real Christians and exemplary citizens of its imme- 
diate allies, its superior influence in this respect with the mass of a na- 
tion might well be questioned. We have seen how the case stands as 
to the Episcopal clergy, in England. Now what is it as to the royal 
family, the peers, and gentry ? Have the princes set a Christian ex- 
ample .'' In the scandalous debate of the House of Commons (April 
13th, 1818,) respecting the marriage of the royal family, lord Castle- 
reagh remarked that " of the seven sons of his Majesty, not one, al- 
though the youngest was forty-five years of age, had any lawful issue. 
To excite some of the members of the royal family to marriage was 
now an object of consequence. The Prince llegent, sensible of this, 
had made offers to such of his royal brothers as could reconcile mar- 
riage to their feelings." 

The open concubinage in which they have lived, without being pro- 
scribed by the established church, is sufficiently notorious. On the 
subject of tliese misogamists, I need only repeat the phrase of Mr. Wil- 
berforce, uttered in the House of Commons on the day after the debate 
just mentioned. 

•' As to the allusion made to the character of the princes, he agreed 
that we had no right to enter into the discussion of any man's private 
character. But yet it was impossible to suppress what we saw, and 
felt, and thought." 

To what class of persons belong those flagrant cases of adultery with 
which the English newspapers are filled .'' To the nobility and gentry, 
the hereditary pillars of the establishment. Who give the grand dinner 
parties and concerts, which distinguish the Sabbath in London ^ Who 
make a gala-day of it in the Park, and in fact take the lead in its dese- 
cration ? How is it spent by the high officers of state, the cabinet-minis- 
sters, &c. ? 

The spirit of toleration is not, indeed, the distinguishing trait in the 
history of the Christian world, but this spirit is, doubtless, one of the 
ends of Christianity. How far it has been displayed and cultivated by 
the established church of England, is seen from the contents of a pre- 
ceding note (V). I will make the case somewhat more plain by a few 
additional facts stated upon Parliamentary authority. There are very 
near one hundred and fifty acts on the British statute-book, relative to 

* Letter to sir Samuel Romilly, p. 481. 



501 

NOTES. 

. .1 p c^^omnrv alleffiance, abiuration, &c. (Mr. Croker, May PART I. 

SST 9'Houre'o7SiTc.tl.oli em.ncipati'on has been now ^^^^ 

:>a, ibiy, no'ist^ t> / . Grattan, May 3d, 1819,) 

agualed '" l^-^l'^"'f J/^^fcaSirreligl-transubstanti^^^ ti.e sa- 

« riKemsf the i vocation of saints, are still declared idolatrous 

Sn the B Fsh s ult'-book. Thus, near five millions of the -Lab. 

Ls of the British Isles, are held and st.gmat.zed by law ^s idolaters. 

Far! G rev in the House of Lords (May 17th, 1819.) and general 1 horn- 

fon in the' House of Commons (May Tth, 1818,) moved to expunge from 

Ke Bri i h code, this insult and injustice to so large a portion of h.s ma- 

estv'B bjects; but they could make no impression upon he rnujorUy 

if Pailiame^n The Earl of Uonoughmore, in supporting the Catholic 

petSt^n the House of Peers, in 1818, related the following anec- 

'^^The Earl of Donoughmore said « a circumstance had happened in the 
met inohs itself, wiiich he would state. It was a toast given i7i a large 
7^XT^^tlemen, and which is resorted to by none but persons who. 
rpl/oTsituation and prosperity, are -"^'^•^.'1 ,^« ^^^^^^f "^Tit .vas 
T5nt what was this toast ? it was so nauseous and disgusting, that it was 
Sith d fficX t^hat he could prevail upon himself to pol ute their lord- 
Thts HousX the mere repetition of U^ /"S'^^V.^JF^ '" ^'" P'""'^' 
the nillorv in hell— pelted with priests by the devil ! ,• •, , 

«.'^ t his was not a mean drunken folly;-it was the sober mahgn.ty 
of the biffot which the unguarded sincerity of beastly debauch had m- 
dscreetW brought into optn day. And all this took p ace in the me- 
TrrpoUs, as he had already stated, which was the station of a Parlia- 
ment and is still the residence of the king's representative. 

Thus, hi whatever point of view we look at the established church 
in England, we do not find it accomplishing any thing for Christianity 
beyond whkt is effected elsewhere under a different system. It has 
^nf nroduced a better clergy ; nor a more moral gentry ; nor a more 
^ducTed and chrSized^ople ; it has left a great pa.-t of the nation 
without instruction ; without temples of worship ; it has tended to de- 
cade the clerical character by the intrigue and competition to which 
Sslarce livings have given rise ; and by the abject poverty and d.s- 
mr ty of rank to which those of its professors not so fortunate as to gain 
The nrizes in the lottery, have been condemned. It may be an excel- 
e^t engfne of s ate?but,^as our civil institutions, with which we are per- 
fectly content, do; not stand in need of such aid, we cheerfuUy leave 
the honor and profit of it to England. 

(NOTE Z. p. 424.) 

In addition to the facts respecting the condition and character of the 
BriUsh population and institutions, which I have scattered through the 
nreceding notes ; I will present the reader, here, with a miscellany of a 
SmUar purport, vouched by parliamentary and other unquestionable 
evTdenc?. It cannot be thought harsh, if, too, I subjoin a tew extracts 
from British newspapers and journals, in the manner of the English 
trrelle s and critics,'^when they treat of our affairs. Ihe Quarterly 
Review lays great stress upon scraps picked out ot American gazettes, 
"s illustrations of the state and morals of the whole American people. 
Nee lex ulla jequior est, &c. 

HOSPITALS, PRISONS, IMPRISONMENTS, &c. 
In 1814, says the Parliamentary Report on tlie Police of the Metro- 
TioUs, ninety-eight boys under sixteen were committed to N ewga e ; 
four of them of nine years, eight of them of ten years, and twelve 



502 NOTES. 

PART 1. of tiiem of eleven years of age. In 1815, ninety-eight hoys under 
v.^-v'-^^ sixteen were committed; and in 1816, 146 of the same age were com- 
mitted. In 1816, there were committed 1683 persons under twen- 
ty, of tliese 1281 were of seventeen and under, and 957of tiiese of se- 
venteen years of age and under, were committed for felonies. From 
the 25th of August, 1814, to October 1816, 200 boys had been in cus- 
tody. Of these, twenty-tree had been in custody for the first offence ; 
one aged sixteen had been forty times in ciistody, and another had been 
eighty times in custody; and 170 of them iiad been from three to four 
times in custody, for different ofl'ences. Of these 200 there were con- 
victed 141; 26 of them capitally, tiie youngest of these was nine and a 
half years old; 42 were transported, the youngest of them was eleven; 
and 73 were imprisoned for different terms. Of these 200 two-thirds 
were under fourteen, and down to eiglit years of age. The remainder 
one-third were trom foiu-teen to seventeen years of age. Of these 200 
miserable beings, two-thirds could neither read nor write. 

" On the swbject of transportation, it appeared, that since 1812, 4659 
persons had been transported to Botany JJay, of whom 3978 were males, 
and 681 females. Of these, 1116 were under twenty-one; of whom, 5 
were of eleven years; 7 of twelve years; 17 of thirteen years; 32 of 
fourteen years ; and 65 of fifteen years of age. Of these 4(359 persons, 
2055 were transported for life, 726 for fourteen years, and 1916 for se- 
ven years. Of 2038 wlio were on board the hulks in 1815, there were 
111 under twenty years of age, amongst whom one was of eleven, two 
of twelve, and four of fourteen years of age. The number of boys of 
seventeen and under, confined in Newgate in 1817, was 359, and in 
1818, of persons under twenty-one years of age, six hundred, including 
males and females." 

" On the first day of January, 1817, there were on board the different 
liulks, two thousand and forty-one prisoners ; from which time to the 
first of January, 1818, two thousand three hundred and sixty-four were 
I'eceived on board from the difi'crent goals ; one thousand seven hun- 
dred and ninety have actually been transported to New South Wales, 
(being an excess of the preceeding year of seven hundred and eighty- 
iwo prisoners) forty-five have died ; and four hundred and thirty-seven 
have been discharged, or removed to other places of confinement ; leav- 
ing on board the respective ships on the first of January, 1818, two 
thousand one hundred and thirty-two prisoners." (Oflicial Report to 
Lord Sidmouth.) 

Tlie third Report on the Prisons of the Metropolis, states, that 
tlirough three <j\' the prisons "there passed in 1819, 10,371 persons, all 
of whom must have gone away more corrupt tlian they came." 

In tiie Report on Mendicity and Vagrancy, of tiie House of Com- 
mons, it is stated, that in one half of the cases of those who beg, beg- 
gary is the eftect of real distress. 

The number of .street mendicants in London, was returned at 15,288, 
of whom 9218 were children. 

Mr. Bennet said, June 5, 1818, "the House of Commons was proba- 
bly not aware, that, from the year 1816 to 1818, no less thari 3600 had 
been sent to Botany Bay ; and tiiat liom the ) ear 1798, it had cost the 
country no less than foiir millions to defray the expense of transporta- 
tion." 

In the three first months of the year 1818 — 118 persons were tried 
for forgery of Bank of England Notes — the expenses for which were 
7..19,982 5s. 6d. 

Lord Castlereagh ("March 1, 1819,) admitted, that it appeared by the 
returns, that within the last three or four years, crime had increased to 
an alarming extent, almost in the proportion of two to one ; and com- 
paring the commitments of the last year with those ten years ago, in 



NOTES. • 503 

some classes of crime they were in the ratio of nearly three to one. PART I. 

Such a view was in some respects appalling. The punishment of death, .^^ _ -^_. 
certainly iiad increased in frequency in these kingdoms. At tiie close 
of the year 1805, tlie number of capital convictions was 350, and at the 
teiinination of the last year 1250." 

Alderman Wood observed, (.March 1, 1819,) "the great increase of 
crimes was to be ascribed to the promiscuous congregation of prisoners 
left without employment. He had, by virtue of an authority from Lord 
Sidmouth, visited all the goals in the country, and was convinced that it 
would take six or seven years to make an efficient parhamentary in- 
quiry." 

Mr W. Wynne, (March 11, 1819.) "He was shocked to find, and 
every man of humanity would shudder at the idea, that the lunatic sel- 
dom or ever obtained his release." 

Mr. Bennet, (May 20, 1818,) presented the Report of the Committee 
appointed to inquire into the state of Fever in the metropolis. In moving 
that the report be printed, the honourable member said, "the medical 
institutions of this city were very defective. In all the Hospitals it was the 
practice to mix cases of contagious fevers with common instances of in- 
disposition, and the consequence was, that not only patients, but nurses 
and medical persons fell victims to this want of arrangement. And such 
was the deficiency of supply of assistance for the sick and diseased 
poor, that at the ])rincipal hospitals foxir out of Jive cases were weekly 
refused." The committee recommended these circumstances, and the 
evidence contained in the Report, to the consideration of his majesty's 
ministers. 

The Marquis of Lansdowne said, (June 26, 1819.) "Their lordships 
on enquiry would find that deaths had occurred in lunatic establish- 
ments, and that it had been impossible for the magistrates after the 
strictest investigations, to discover in what manner the unfortunate be- 
ings had been disposed of. These facts offered strong grounds for their 
lordships adopting some system of regulation; but another powerful 
reason in favour of the bill was the situation of pauper lunatics. These 
unfortunate persons were left too much at the mercy of parish officers. 
Let their lordships read the evidence of a noble lord, a member of the 
other House of Parliament, he meant lord li. Seymour, and they would 
be convinced of the necessity of a remedy for the great abuses in the 
management of the insane poor. They were often kept in the work- 
houses till they became furious, and there were instances of tiieir being 
bled until they became, from weakness, more manageable." 

" An official return, printed by order of the House of Commons, pre- 
sents in one vievv' an accurate representation of the state of crimes made 
capital by the law, in the several years, from the year 1805 to the year 
1818, inclusive. From this it appears, that the total number of persons 
convicted of burglary in said interval, was 1874, of whom, 199 were exe- 
cuted ; of larceny in dwelling houses to the value of 40s. 1119, of whom 
17 were executed ; of forgery 501, of whom 207 were executed ; horse 
stealing 852, of whom 35 were executed; house breaking in the day 
time, and larceny, 761, of whom 17 were executed ; of murder 229, of 
whom 202 were executed ; robbery on the person, the highway, and 
other places, 848, of whom 118 were executed; siieep stealing 896, of 
whom 43 were executed; making, with various other offences of a ca- 
pital nature within said interval, a gross total of convicted, 8430, of 
whom 1035 were executed." (Bell's Weekly Messenger, March 29, 
1819.) 

Sir .Tames Macintosh said, (.March 3, 1819.) "The grratest change 
produced by the revolution of 1688, was what might be termed the 
establishment of a Parliamentary government. (Hear, hear.) Yet it 
had been attended with one important inconvenience — the unhappy 



504 NOTES. 

PART 1. facility afforded to legislation ; the ease with which every member of 
>s^^-v-^^ Parliament could indulge his whims and caprices ; the little difficulty 
he found in obtaining measures to augment the number of capital felo- 
nies. [Hear.] An anecdote, confirmatory of this statement, was .old 
by Mr. Burke, in the early part of his public career. He was about to 
leave the house, when he was detained by a gentleman who wishea 
him to remain. Mr. Burke pleaded urgent business; and the rejdy of 
the individual who held him was, that the subject on which the house 
was engaged would very soon be dismissed, as it was only upon the 
subjectof a capital felony, without benefit of clergy. [Laughter.] Mr. 
Burke had afterwards stated, that he had no doubt that he could, with- 
out difficulty, have obtained the assent of the house to any bill he 
brought in for capital punishment." 

" Mr. Bennet observed, (June 26, 1816,) that the abuse of the system 
of solitary confinement had exceeded any thing that could have been 
imagined. For the crime of vagrancy a person had been subject to 
this terrible punishment for thirteen months, one for seven months, and 
one for four months. 

"Among the cases mentioned in the return was that of a man who had 
been kept in solitary confinement three months, for destroying a phea- 
sant's egg! That was to say the miserable being who fell under the 
Sf iitence was kept twenty-three hours out of twenty-four within four 
small walls, without any kind of employment, either entirely open to 
the air, or quite excluded from light ; and the crime for which this 
punishment was inflicted was the breaking of a pheasant's egg." 

" Mr. Western said, (April 2, 1819,) that in looking at the return': 
already prepared for the years 1817 and 1818, it would appear that 
there were two thousand per.sons in each year, again.st whom either no 
bills were found, or who were not prosecuted, and two thousand six 
hundred who were acquitted. In the period which elapsed between 
July and the Lent assizes, many persons had been confined, who had 
remained in prison perliaps fourteen or fifteen months, before they had 
been tried — an enormous evil." 

" .Mr. M. A. Taylor asked, (May 26, 1818,) did the house consider 
it fit and proper that this state of things should continue ; that in four 
counties there should be but one assize in a year; and that prisoners 
should, notwithstanding all the exertions of magistrates, in disposing of 
minor offences, lie for so many months in confinement, before they 
were brought to trial. A man, taken up on suspicion, and sent to the 
county gaol, must in such a case be ruined, however innocent of the 
crime imputed to him. We might boast as much as we pleased of our 
superior laws, and practice of adminis'cring tliem, but there was no 
country in Europe where so monstrous a defect existed in the judiciary 
system — a defect equally injurious to individuals and disgraceful to the 
character of justice. A case of manslaughter had recently occurred, 
in which the prisoner was acquitted, after lying eleven months in con- 
finement; the whole punishment annexed by law to the conviction of 
that offence being but twelve montlis' imprisonment. One man he had 
known indicted for stealing a game cock, who was closely confined for 
nine months ; and when he was at leuiilh brought to trial, there was not 
u shadow of evidence to prove his guilt." 

" Mr. W. Smith said, (.May 26, 1818,) that he had been informed by 
the town clerk of Norwich, that instances had occurred of persons 
being confined nine or ten months previously to their trial ; and a navy 
surgeon had been confined for twelve montlis, and then acquitted. By 
so long an imprisonment, individuals sometimes suffered more than 
they would have done, if convicted, from the sentence of the law." 

".Mr. Bennet said, (May 6, 1817,) that last year there was a wretched 
individual in tlie Fleet, who had been confined there, under an order 



NOTES. 505 

of the court of chancery, for contempt of court, for no less a time than PART 1. 
thirty-one years. The name of that man was Thomas WiUiams. He v^^v"w^ 
had visited him in his wretched house of bondage, where he found 
him sinking under all the miseries that can afflict humanity ; and on the 
following day he died. There were at this moment within the wails of 
the same prison, besides the petitioner, a woman who had been in con- 
finement twenty-eight years, and two others who had been there seven- 
teen years." 

"It wus worthy of remark that eight hundred persons were commit- 
ted to Clerkenwell prison, in one year, chiefly for assaults." 

The following is an authentic list of persons who, in October, 1817, 
were confined in the Fleet pnson aloiie, for co7itempt of court, no other 
charges being alleged against them : viz. Hannah Baker, confined twen- 
ty-seven years; Charles Bulmer, eighteen years; Ann Britner, ten 
years ; Richard Bell, five years ; Matthew Bland, five years ; Jeremiah 
Board, three years ; Elizabeth Dawson, seven years ; David William, 
six years ; Mary Tiuch, three years ; Samuel Mansell, four years ; John 
Melson, three years; George Picked, fifteen years; Thomas Pale, 
three years; Peter Rigby, four years; I. Scribner, eight years; John 
Watts, four years ; John Somax, seven years ; William Smith, eighteen 
years. 

" Mr. Bennet said, (March 28, 1817,) that the situation of the pri- 
sons in Dublin was miserable in the extreme, and certainly it could not 
be too much lamented that any human beings should be confined in 
them." 

" Mr. Peele entirely coincided in the opinion of the honourable gen- 
tleman, as to the miserable state of the prisons in Ireland, and should 
be happy to find that any measures could be taken, which would lead 
to the amelioration of the condition of the wretched inmates." 

" The Marquis of Lansdowne said, (June 3, 1818,) from the informa- 
tion contained in the report of the House of Commons on the state of 
the prisons of the kingdom, it appeared that, in the course of ten 
years, such had been the progress of crimes, that they had increased 
to three times their former amount. It was not improbable that, out 
of the number annually consigned to the prisons, thirteen thousand wtve 
permitted to return to society, either by being acquitted, or after hav- 
ing undergone the sentence of imprisonment. In what a state of de- 
gradation must they, under their present system, return to the duties, 
or, he was afraid, rather to the vices of civihzed men." 

" Mr. Buxton said, that from parliamentary documents it could be 
seen, that it was ten to one that an ofiender was not taken, fifty to one 
that he was not prosecuted, a hundred to one that he was not convicted, 
and more than a thousand to one that he was not executed." 

"Alderman Wood rose (House of Commons, March 12, 1819). He 
said, that the petition which he had to present did not complain of the 
heavy burdens which the lord mayor and corporation had to bear, in 
supporting the various persons confined in the different prisons of the 
metropolis, but of the crowded state of the gaols at the present mo- 
ment. They were so full, that it was totally impossible to attempt any 
reformation in their inmates, by classifying them, according to the 
crimes of which they had been guilty. Newgate was filled to repletion 
with criminals under different sentences : there were now in it forty- 
seven individuals condemned to death, besides sixteen individuals for 
lesser offences, who had been sent there by the magistrates from the 
Clerkenwell sessions. Of these sixteen he was sorry to observe that 
fifteen were for abominable and infamous offences, and that from want 
of space they had all been placed in one room. This was an evil which 
ought, by all means, to be remedied. There was another, also, which 
he wished to press upon the attention of the house. There was no 
Yoi. I.— 3 S 



50S Noxes. 

PART I. accommodation, in any of tlie prisons, for state prisoners; and he 
^^^n^,.^. thought it rather liard that an individual of respectable rank and cha- 
racter should be compelled to herd with common felons, as be now was 
obliged to do, if committed by lliat house. Latterly, Newgate had beeo 
so crowded, that in the fifteen condemned cells they had been obliged 
to place the forty-seven men now under sentence of deatii, tiuis giving 
a proportion of more than three inmates to each cell ; which was muq^ 
greater than it ought to be." ** 

" iVIen, who see tiieir lives respected and thought of value by others, 
come to respect that gift of Gtid themselves. IJefore he sat <lown, he 
begged leave to say a few words on a public spectacle, which had been 
made at Newgate, of a wretched man, who, being accused of murder, 
had destroyed himself It was stated in the newspapers of that day, 
that the mangled and bloody corpse had been exhibited in an elevated 
situation, with a small gallows erect< d over it, to wliich was appended 
the fatal instrument of destruction. Such a horrid exposition, he was 
persuaded, was calculated to produce the most mischievous conse- 

?uences on the men, women, and children b^ whom it was beheld." 
Sir Samuel Roindly, ib. Feb. 25, 1818 ) 

" Mr, Bu.xton said, (March 3, 1819,) with respect to the effect which 
an execution was supposed to have upon the minds of the criminals, he 
could assure the house that it was ne.xt to nothing; and if any gentle- 
man would expose his feelings to the pain of seeing one of these 
dreadful exhibitions, the truth of iiis assertion would immediately ap- 
pear. 

" He believed there was not a single instance of an execution having 
taken place, without some robberry being committed at the same time, 
under the gallows. Indeed, it had been admitted by one of tlie light- 
fingered gang, that an execution was their harvest, as, while people's 
eyes were open above, their pockets were loose below. 

" There was a fact within his recollection, whicii, if possible, would 
place the matter in a stronger light. A man was executed in this me- 
tropolis for selling forged bank-notes: his body was given over to his 
family, and it was taken home. The first feeling would be that of com- 
passion towards his afflicted children, and a disconsolate widow ; but 
the house would be shocked to hear that this unhappy family and 
mourning friends were actually seized by the police-officers, in the act 
of selling forged notes, over the dead body. It was evident, therefore, 
that something ought to be done." 

" From the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons on 
the Police of the Metropolis, it appears that many thousands of boys 
are daily engaged in the commission of crime : that in one prison only 
(Clerkenwell), where young and old are all mixed indiscriminately 
together, three hundred and ninety-nine boys, under twenty, were con- 
fided for felonies in the last year; of whom was one of nine, two were 
of ten, seven of eleven, fourteen of twelve, and thirty-two of thirteen 
years of age ! 

" Nor is it possible to pass over, in this inquiry, the dreadful state of 
our infant population, and the alarming increase oi juvenile delinquency- 
To no cause whatever can this be attributed to with so much certamty 
as to the depraved and hardened disposition of the parents, the result 
of that habit of intoxication, which induces them either to abandon 
their offspring altogether, or, in order to supply the cravings of their 
depraved appetites, to incite them to, and instruct them in, every spe- 
cies of theft and depredation. The extent to which this has been car- 
ried, not only in the metropolis, but in some of the principal towns \r. 
the kingdom, would be as incredible as it is disgraceful, were it no' 
from its almost daily exposure in our judicial proceedings." 

Roscoe's Observations on Penal Jurisprudence. 1819, 



NOTES. 507 

PART I. 
COURTS OF LAW AND CHANCERY. v,«».-v^*«^ 

[Mr. Brougham, June 3d, 1818.] A number of the objections which 
had been made to the bill (for a committee to enquire into the edu- 
cation of the poor) were grounded on the confidence which those 
wlio made them reposed in courts of law, as affording the means of 
correcting abuses. He confessed that he himself had not any rehance 
on courts of law in that respect, especially with reference to expedi- 
tion and cheapness. He allowed those courts the possession of learn- 
ing without stint. He allowed them great copiousness, great power 
of drawing out written argument. The faculty of caring nothing 
for the time and patience of suitors, and the hundreds of thousands 
of their clients' money they enjoyed in a perfection which the wild- 
est sallies of imagination could not go beyond. But as to e.xpedltion 
and cheapness, and attention to the comfort of those who were in- 
volved in the business of those courts, they were qualities by which 
they were certainly not distinguished- 

Notwithstanding all the good qualities on the part of the noble 
and learned lord (Chancellor,) it was his (Mr. Brougham's) duty to say, 
that there was something in the court of chancery that set at defiance 
all calculations of cost and time, and i-endered the celebrated irony of 
Swift, when he made Gulliver tell the worthy Hynynhmn, his master, 
(what he says, his honour found it hard to conceive,) that his father had 
been wholly ruined by the misfortune of having gained a chancery suit, 
with full costs, not only not an exaggeration, but a strictly correct de- 
scription of the fact. 

Sir John Newport stated (June 2d, 1818,) "To show the enormous 
nature of the fees in the Court of Chancery, he might mention that in 
one case, the fees for docketing, enrolling, exemphfying, and register- 
ing a decree, amounted to upwards of 800/." 

The Marquis of Lansdowne observed (March 6ih 1818,) "That no 
source of revenue operated to produce greater mischief to the poorer 
classes, than the stamps on law proceedings. The expense they occa- 
sioned was an obstacle to the attainment of justice. 

" As to the present measure, he continued, it went merely to re- 
lieve unfortunate poor persons from paying the fees on pardons, which 
amounted on each to about 60/., and therefore it could operate in a very 
slight degree towards the reduction of the revenue." 

" The bill of the solicitor of the excise, in the prosecution of Weaver, 
for (he offence of selling a certain drug to a brewer, amounted to nearly 
250/. In this case, there were five counsel employed for the Crown, 
and the penalty ultimately recovered from the delinquent was 200/" 

The following return has been laid before the House of Commons, of 
the amount of property locked up in the Court of Chancery in England; 
viz. in 1796, upwards of fourteen millions of pounds sterling; in 1806, 
upwards of twenty-one millions; in 1816, upwards of thirty-one mil- 
lions; in 1818, upwards of thirty-three millions. 

Mr. Hume (March 1814,) begged to call the attention of the House 
of Commons particularly to the police in India. Persons were frequently 
taken up, and months elapsed before any information was exhibited 
against them. In the interval, they were confined in crowded and un- 
healthy prisons, where death not unfrequently overtook them, or after 
enduring the aggravated misery of imprisonment, nothing whatever 
appeared against them, and they were liberated. The whofe system of 
police at Bengal was conducted by a set of spies, who were generally 
"composed of bands of robbers ; these, when once discharged,' were let 
ioose to ravage the surrounding country. By a minute of the Bengal go- 
vernment, dated the 24th of November, 1810, it appeared that the pro- 



508 NOTES. 

PART I. fession of a spy, in India, took its rise upon the ordei' issued in 1792, for 
. _^- . the encouragement of head money. Every police-office had its regular 

and organized set of spies, who shared the reward or head money \vith 
the chief of the deceits (a species of robbers.) Much had been said by an 
honourable member (sir W. Burroughs) as to the economy observed in 
the appointment of legal men in India, affecting the administration of 
justice. So far from there being any ihing like economy in this respect, 
the whole of Europe, put together, was at less expense for law officers 
than India alone — (Hear.) The whole revenue of India was estimated 
at 11,000,000/.; the charges of the law altogether were no less than 
1,785,000/. sterling, above one-eleventh of that revenue. 



BANKRUPTCY. 

" In Scotland," (said lord Archibald Hamilton, 1818,) "the burgli 
of Aberdeen had been declared bankrupt for 230,000/. sterling, attend- 
ed with extensive ruin. It had dissolved in its rottenness." 

" Sir William Curtis remarked, (Feb. 24th, 1818,) that rich men can 
go to the King's-bench prison, and drink their burgundy : They first 
rob their neighbours and then get whitewashed." 

" Up to the 1st of March, 1817, (said Mr. Waithman, Feb. 12th 1819,) 
9000 persons were discharged under the debtors' insolvent act, whose 
united debts amounted to nine millions sterling; whilst the property 
which they had given up to their creditors would not, on the average, 
pay a dividend of one half a farthing in the pound." 

" Sir S. Romilly observed, that every man conversant with the bank- 
rupt laws must know, that not a year passed without the occurrence of 
a great number of fraudulent bankruptcies." (lb. Feb. 25th, 1816.)i 

Mr. Lockart rose (Feb. 17th, 1817,) according to notice, to move for 
the introduction of a bill to amend the bankrupt laws. 

The evil of which he complained was the multiplication of fraudu- 
lent bankruptcies to an extent which threatened the most frightful con- 
sequences to the commerce and morals of the country. 

By late returns to Parliament it appears, that the aggregate number of 
insolvent debtors discharged since the last return in 1815, up to 1st of 
February, 1819, was 13,291; the amount of their debts 9,506,837/. 16s. 
11^^/. ; and the amount of dividends but sixty thousand pounds. 

"Every one who heard him," said Mr. Buxton, (House of Commons, 
March 3d, 1819.) "certainly must know how many fraudident circum- 
stances were connected -ivith almost all the bankruptcies that nniu take 
place; and after a more careful examination, it had been declared, on 
the highest authority, that of the bankruptcies which occurred, by far 
the greater number were of a fraudulent description." 



FINANCIAL MATTERS. 

Mr. Baring said, (1817,) "there could be no doubt, notwithstanding 
the dehcacy which had been professed on the subject of touching the 
sinking fund, that to all practical purposes, it was completely swept 
away." 

Mr. Ricardo (June 10, 1819,) had already opposed the grant of three 
millions towards a sinking fimd, because he did not wish to place such 
a fund at the mercy of ministers, who would take it whenever they 
thought urgent necessity required it. He did not mean to say that it 



NOTES. 509 

would be better with one set of ministers than another, for he looked PART I. 
upon it tliat all ministers would be anxious, on cases of what they con- v,^-v-^^ 
ceived emergency, to appropriate it to the public use. He thought, 
therefore, the whole thing a delusion upon the public, and on that ac- 
count he would never suj^port a tax to maintain it. 

The evil of the national debt ought to be met. It was an evil which 
almost any sacrifice would not be too great to get rid of. It destroyed 
the equilibrium of prices, occasioned many persons to emigrate to other 
countries, in order to avoid the burden of taxation which it entailed, and 
hung like a millstone round the exertion and industry of the country. 
He therefore, never would give a vote in support of any tax which 
went to continue a sinking fund ; for if that fund were to amount to 
eight millions, ministers would on any emergency give the same account 
of it as they did at present. The delusion of it was seen long ago by 
all those who were acquainted with the subject ; and it would have 
been but fair and sound policy to have exposed it long ago. 

Mr. Brougham said, (June 8, 1819) "How stood the circumstances 
with respect to this fund ? In 1786, it amounted to one million, and an 
addition of 200,000/. was made soon after. In 1792, it was increased by 
so much of each loan, as gave assurance that at the end of 45 years such 
loan would be expunged by the gradual operation of the sinking fund. 
This pledge continued to 1802, when new arrangements were made by 
Lord Sidmouth, that did not much postpone the term of payment. The 
operation of 1813, was to accelerate the liquidation of the debt, towards 
the close of the period pledged for that purpose, and the fund was then 
reduced to 15,000,000/. instead of 21,000,000/. to which it had accumu- 
lated. The fund holder was then told that repayment would go on at 
an accelerated rate from a certain term, and now came the plan by 
which all this was bid adieu to, and the sinking fund reduced to 
5,000,000/. Did not this place the public credit on a different footing ? 
and was it not, to all intents and purposes, a breach of faith ? 

"Lord Holland stated, in a speech sometime since, that the royal fii- 
mily of England, that is to say, the maintenance of the mere state of the 
crown, cost the country o?ie million two Jmndred thousand pounds .' or 
nearly one-fourth of the whole assessed taxes of the kingdom." (Bell's 
Weekly Messenger, Alay 18, 1819.) 

" Mr. Tierney slated, (April 5, 1818,) that his majesty's privy purse 
amounted to sixty thousand pounds. A privy purse of sixty thousand 
pounds, in the present state of his majesty ! [Hear, hear.'] Out of this 
sum he admitted that the allowance to the physicians had to be paid ; 
but on the most liberal allowance to them, this would not amount to 
eighteen thousand pounds a yeai". Tiiere was also received out of the 
dutchy of Lancaster ten thousand pounds. So that here was seventy 
thousand pounds that her majesty had, without there being a necessity, 
of rendering an account for any part of it. With the deduction of an 
allowance to the pliysicians, and a i'ew pensions, this was a fund for ac- 
cumulation for somebody. Her majesty's establishment amounted to 
one hundred thousand pounds a year. These two sums together made 
one hundred and seventy thousand pounds. But besides this, her ma- 
jesty was allowed for her Windsor establishment fifty-eight thousand 
pounds, and an additional allowance of one thousand pounds a year for 
what was called travelling expenses; and the allowance for the two 
princesses was twenty-six thousand pounds, making the total of the 
Windsor establishments amount to no less a sum than two hundred and 
sixty-four thousand pounds per annum." [Hear, hear.'] 

" Mr. Brougham considered, (1817,) that the amount of the pension 
list in 1809, a year when the four and a half per cent fell extremely 
short, was two hundred and twenty thousand pounds. Upon that list 
were to be found the names of those who had rendered no service ; 



510 



NOTES. 



PART I. persons vvlio Ijeloiigetl to fumilies not more distinguislied for liieir anli- 
^^^v^^ quity and rank tlian for their wealtli and si)lendonr, and wiiose only 
title to their pensions, lie presumed, was their invariable support of the 
ministers of the crown, wlioever those ministers might be." 

"The sinecure vacated by the death of the Earl of Buckingliam- 
shire had been worse tlian useless ; it had served as a screen to the 
most shocking abuses, and the most abominable frauds." (Lord Lans- 
downe, May, 1816.) 

"Sir 11. Parnell said, (July 13, 1819,) in stating the increase of the 
civil list, it ought to have been stated to have increased from 900,000/. 
to 1,030,000/." 

" Mr. Calcraft expressed his obligations to the honourable baronet 
for bringing forward his resolutions, and trusted that he would not be 
deterred from future inquiries by the criticisms which every man who 
talked of economy was exposed to, from the bench opposite him. The 
main resolutions had not been grappled with by the right honourable 
getleman (Mr. Long,) that the revenue was collected at the enormous 
expense of 5,500,000/. Had he shown that it was collected at less ? 
This was the key to the popularity and consequence of the present 
administration. So long as they had these 5,500,000/. to distribute, so 
long would they hear, from those who received it, of their popularity." 

"The credit of the custom house tables (said Mr. Brougham, in his 
speech of June 16, 1812,) would be but small, after the account of 
them which appears in evidence. But the evidence sufficiently ex- 
plains on which side of the scale the error is likely to lie. There is, 
it would seem, a fellow feeling between the gentlemen at the custom 
house, and their honoured masters at the board of trade ; so that when 
the latter wish to make blazing statements of national prosperity, the 
former are ready to find the fact. The managing clerk of one of the 
greatest mercantile houses in the city, tells you that he has known 
packages entered at 500/. which were not worth 50/. — that those sums 
are entered at random, and cannot be at all relied upon. Other wit- 
nesses, particularly from Liverpool, confirm the same fact ; and I know*, 
as does my right hon. friend, the Chancellor of the E.xcliequei-, who 
was present, that the head of the same respectable house, a few days 
ago mentioned at an official conference \\ith him, an instance of his 
own clerks being desired at the Custom House, to make a double entry 
of an article for export. After such facts as these, I say it is in vain to 
talk of Custom House returns, even if they were contradicted in no re- 
spect by other evidence." ■> • 

The consumers of tea, said Mr. EUice, (June 18, 1819,) paid not only 
3,500,000/. to government, but 2,000,000/ to the monopoly of the East 
India company. 

Civil Contingencies Bill— March 19,1819—3191/. for expen.se of fur- 
niture for one room in the Royal Yalcht — 13,300/. e.\pences of grand 
duke Nicholas. 22,500/ for snuffboxes to foreign ministers. 10,897/. 
for fees and presents to German Barons, Sec. 

Mr. Tierney said, (1819,) that the amount of pensions for England 
and Scoil;md, independently of those founded on parliamentary g^rants. 
was 250,000/. .' - 



LOOSE EXTRACTS FROM ENGLISH JOURNALS. 

" After the bodies of the criminals, Chenncl and Chalcraft, had been 
cut down, they were received into the waggon, which convened them 
to the place of execution, and extended on the elevated stage which 
had been constructed in the vehicle. The procession of officers, con- 



NOTES. 511 

stables, 84c. was then reformed, and the remains of the murderers were PART I. 
conveyed in slow and awful silence through the town of Godalming, un- s^^-V"^^ 
til they arrived at the house of the late Mr. Chennel. Here the pro- 
cession halted, and the bodies of Chennel and Chalcraft were removed 
from tlie wagj^on into the kitchen of the house, one of them being 
placed on tlie very spot where the housekeeper, Elizabeth Wilson, was 
found murdered. After this the surgeon proceeded to perform the 
first offices of dissection, and the bodies in this state were left to the 
gaze of thousands, who througiiout the day eagerly rushed in to view 
them. (Bell's Weekly Messenger, 1818.) 

"The country assizes," said the London Courier of April 4, 1817 — 
" now just terminated, have presented a list of criminals quite unparal- 
leled for magnitude in the history of this country. At no former pe- 
riod have they amounted to more than a fourth or a third part of their 
present number. From fifteen to fifty capital convictions have taken place 
in almost every county. At Lancaster assizes forty -six persons received 
sentence of death. In October last it was proved in a court of law, that 
a club of conspirators (Halters) at Manchester, perjured themselves by 
wholesale, to the amount of one hundred and thirty at a time ; and now it 
is just proved that a knot of assassins can be as easily hired in England, 
as in Italy. Three hundred of Messrs. Bodin's workmen, at Loughbo- 
rough, having conspired against their employers about wages, subscrib- 
ed a fund, and hired, at five pounds each man, a squad of assassins well 
skilled in the art of house burning, and murder, who destroyed their 
master's premises in revenge." 

Revolt in Winchester College. — *' We are happy to state, that tranquil- 
lity has been restored at Wuichester College, that the business of the 
school has been resumed with order, and tliat the young gentlemen 
have since shown perfect resignation to the will of their able teachers 
About ten of the gentlemen commoners have been allowed to resign. 
There were only six (out of 230) who did not join in the revolt, the 
two senior and four other college prefects. (Bell's Weekly Messen- 
ger, May 18, 1818.) 

We are happy to announce that prosecutions have been brought 
against a number of grocers for the manufacture and sale of a perni- 
cious substitute for tea, composed of the leaves of the black and white 
thorn, boiled, dried on copper plates, and coloured with logwood, ver- 
digrease, and Dutch pink. The facts were proved at great length, and 
verdicts found in the Court of Exchequer, on Saturday, against no fewer 
than ten dealers in the metropolis, for this fraud. Several of them sub- 
mitted to conviction without resistance, and thvis the important fact is 
established, that this deleterious mixture is imposed on the fair trader. 

There are other articles of human consumption, equally exposed to 
similar frauds. Porter and ale, it has frequently been proved, have 
been mixed with drugs of the most pernicious quality. Port wine, as 
it is called, and especially that sold at very low prices, it is known, has 
been manufactured from sloe juice, British brandy, and logwood. Gin, 
4n order that it may have the grip, or have the appearance of being par- 
ticularly strong, is known to be adulterated with a decoction of long 
pepper, or a small quantity of aquafortis. Bread, from public convic- 
tions, is known to have been made of a mixture of flour, ground stone, 
chalk, and pulverized bones. Milk to have been adulterated with 
whitening and water. Sugar to have been mixed with sand. Pepper 
with fuller's earth and other earths. Mustard, with cheap pungent 
seeds. Tobacco, with various common British herbs. There is scarce 
an article of ordinary consumption, which is not rendered destructive by 
the infiimous and fraudulent practices of interested persons. (Bell's 
Weekly Messenger, May 13, 1818.) 

"The practice of adulterating flour with bones becomes more com- 



613 NOTES, 

PART I. mon. The price of pulverized bones, has accordingly, advanced within 

%^r'\'-^^ theae few years from ten pence a bushel, to eighteen pence to the first 

purchasers. The collection of bones, is, in fact, pursued as a regular 

trade in the metropolis. Fine pulverized clay is also mixed with the 

prime necessary of life. (Literary Panorama, July 19, 1819.) 

" Tiie contraband trade of Great Britain is estimated at about fifteen 
millions sterling a year, by which the revenue is annually defrauded of 
about two millions." 

"December 1, 1818. Lord Ranelagh indicted, convicted and fined 
fifty pounds ibr extorting money (Cor the use of his servants) from tliree 
3'oung men wlio took slielter on his grounds on the banks of the Thames 
in a thunder storm." 

" Dec. 3, 1818. A British naval officer connected with the dock yard 
at Chatham, is condemned (at St. Omer's) to five years labour in chains 
for uttering forged bank of England notes in the neighbourhood of St. 
Omer, Dunkirk and Calais." 

"Feb. 26, 1819. Bartiiolomew Broughton, an officer in His Majesty^s 
navy, was brought before Mr. Alderman Cox, as sitting alderman, 
charged with felony in stealing bank notes and oilier property at the 
White Horse, Fetter Lane, and the Swan with two necks. Lads Lane, 
where he had at different times slept." 

"Old Bailey, 26th Feb. 1819. Edward liawrence Colman, late purser 
in His JVlajestifs navy, was convicted on an indictment for embezzling 
his employers money — Mess Lewis and Company, Oxenden street." 

" March 18, 1819. A naval court martial was held a few days ago 
on board His Majesty's ship Northumberland, at Chatham, for the trial 
of capt. W. E. Wright, of the navy, for smuggling. He was convicted 
and sentenced to be dismissed the service." 

(The foregoing cases, it will be observed, occurred within a few 
months of each other. They are collected by a casual reader, and are 
probably not all, of the same nature, that took place during the same 
time.) 

"June, 1819. Tlie Earl of JMorton having lately occasion to call on 
Mr. Geo. Moncrieff, manager of the Union Canal Company in Edin- 
burgh, gave him the lie. A boxing match ensued, ^i^nd blue eyes antl 
bloody noses were the results on both sides. Lord M-orton was high 
commissioner of the general assembly which sat only a few weeks ago." 

" Dec. 1818. It is a fact that Chief Justice Abbott, (the Lord Chief 
.Fustice of England) lately threatened to adjourn the court of King's 
bench, because tallow candles had been produced, instead of wax 
lights." 

" It is also a fact, that the late Justice Gould, when on the circuit, 
once threatened to remove the Essex Assizes from Chelmsford to Col- 
chester, because no good small beer could be found inkhe former town." 

" In a debate which took place in the House of Commons, April 2, 
1819, on the circumstances attending the arrest of general Gourgand, 
sir George Cockburn threw out an accusation, -whilst speaking i?i his 
place, against Gourgaud, by relating what he had heard from him at St. 
Helena, in the hasty and unguarded moments of private conversation. " The 
general," said sir George Cockburn, " stated to me that he had great 
reason to complain of that scoundrel Bertrand, for so these persons 
were in the habit of speaking of each other." 



FINIS. 



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